A Department Q Novel Series

The New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling Department Q series comes to a thrilling conclusion when the team must turn inward to solve the cold case that has put their own leader behind bars, a place where his enemies are plentiful and time is quickly running out.

On the day after Christmas, head of Department Q, Detective Carl Mørck, finds himself handcuffed in a police car headed for Copenhagen’s Vestre prison. After fifteen years, a violent case from his past has caught up with him. Charges of drug trafficking and murder threaten to destroy his life and career. But he is being framed. Someone has a million-dollar bounty on his head to make sure he doesn’t talk, putting him in grave danger among the prison’s incarcerated criminals and corrupt officers. The question that remains is, Why? 

Carl’s colleagues at the Copenhagen Police Department instantly turn their backs on him, leaving the ever-loyal Department Q team as his only hope. In search of answers, Rose, Assad, and Gordon must disobey direct orders from way up the chain to try to unravel case. With only one another to trust and Carl’s battle against the unknown mastermind’s henchmen worsening by the day, they must work faster than ever before if they are to clear his name—and save his life.

In the exhilarating penultimate thriller of the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling Department Q series, the team must hunt for a nefarious criminal who has slipped under the radar for decades.

On her sixtieth birthday, a woman takes her own life. When the case lands on Detective Carl Mørck’s desk, he can’t imagine what this has to do with Department Q, Copenhagen’s cold cases division since the cause of death seems apparent. However, his superior, Marcus Jacobsen, is convinced that this is related to an unsolved case that has been plaguing him since 1988.
 
At Marcus’s behest, Carl and the Department Q gang—Rose, Assad, and Gordon—reluctantly begin to investigate. And they quickly discover that Marcus is onto something: Every two years for the past three decades, there have been unusual, impeccably timed deaths with connections between them that cannot be ignored, including mysterious piles of salt at the scenes. As the investigation goes deeper, it emerges that these “accidents” are in fact part of a sinister murder scheme.
 
Faced with their toughest case yet, made only more difficult by COVID-19 restrictions and the challenges of their personal lives, the Department Q team must race to find the culprit before the next murder is committed, as it is becoming increasingly clear that the killer is far from finished.

In the heart-pounding next installment of the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling Department Q series, a terrifying international investigation reveals the complex backstory of one of the department’s own—the enigmatic Assad.

The newspaper refers to the body only as Victim 2117—the two thousand one hundred and seventeenth refugee to die in the Mediterranean Sea. But to three people, the unnamed victim is so much more, and the death sets off a chain of events that throws Department Q, Copenhagen’s cold cases division led by Detective Carl Mørck, into a deeply dangerous—and deeply personal—case. A case that not only reveals dark secrets about the past, but has deadly implications for the future.

For troubled Danish teen Alexander, whose identity is hidden behind his computer screen, the death of Victim 2117 becomes a symbol of everything he resents and the perfect excuse to unleash his murderous impulses in real life. For Ghaalib, one of the most brutal tormentors from Abu Ghraib—Saddam Hussein’s infamous prison—the death of Victim 2117 is the first step in a terrorist plot years in the making. And for Department Q’s Assad, Victim 2117 is a link to his buried past—and the family he assumed was long dead.

With the help of the Department Q squad—Carl, Rose, and Gordon—Assad must finally confront painful memories from his years in the Middle East in order to find and capture Ghaalib. But with the clock ticking down to Alexander’s first kill and Ghaalib’s devastating attack, the thinly spread Department Q will need to stay one step ahead of their most lethal adversary yet if they are to prevent the loss of thousands of innocent lives.

The New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of The Keeper of Lost Causes delivers his most captivating and suspenseful Department Q novel yet—perfect for fans of Stieg Larsson.
 
Detective Carl Mørck of Department Q, Copenhagen’s cold cases division, meets his toughest challenge yet when the dark, troubled past of one of his own team members collides with a sinister unsolved murder.

In a Copenhagen park the body of an elderly woman is discovered. The case bears a striking resemblance to another unsolved homicide investigation from over a decade ago, but the connection between the two victims confounds the police. Across town a group of young women are being hunted. The attacks seem random, but could these brutal acts of violence be related? Detective Carl Mørck of Department Q is charged with solving the mystery.
 
Back at headquarters, Carl and his team are under pressure to deliver results: failure to meet his superiors’ expectations will mean the end of Department Q. Solving the case, however, is not their only concern. After an earlier breakdown, their colleague Rose is still struggling to deal with the reemergence of her past—a past in which a terrible crime may have been committed. It is up to Carl, Assad, and Gordon to uncover the dark and violent truth at the heart of Rose’s childhood before it is too late.

New York Times and internationally bestselling author Jussi Adler-Olsen delivers an exhilarating mystery in the Department Q series, featuring Detective Carl Mørck and his enigmatic assistants, Assad and Rose.
 
In the middle of his usual hard-won morning nap in the basement of police headquarters, Carl Mørck, head of Department Q, receives a call from a colleague working on the Danish island of Bornholm. Carl is dismissive when he realizes that a new case is being foisted on him, but a few hours later, he receives some shocking news that leaves his headstrong assistant Rose more furious than usual. Carl has no choice but to lead Department Q into the tragic cold case of a vivacious seventeen-year-old girl who vanished from school, only to be found dead hanging high up in a tree. The investigation will take them from the remote island of Bornholm to a strange sun-worshipping cult, where Carl, Assad, Rose, and newcomer Gordon attempt to stop a string of new murders and a skilled manipulator who refuses to let anything—or anyone—get in the way.

A teenaged boy on the run propels Detective Carl Mørck into Department Q’s most sinister case yet in the fifth novel in Jussi Adler-Olsen’s New York Times bestselling series.
 
Fifteen-year-old Marco Jameson longs to become a Danish citizen and go to school like a normal teenager. Unfortunately, his Uncle Zola forces the children of their former gypsy clan to beg and steal for his personal gain. When Marco discovers a dead body that proves the true extent of Zola’s criminal activities, he goes on the run. But it turns out his family members aren’t the only ones who want to keep Marco silent…forever.
 
Detective Carl Mørck wants to save the boy, but Marco’s trail leads him to a case that extends from Denmark to Africa, from embezzlers to child soldiers, from seemingly petty crime rings to the very darkest of cover-ups.

New York Times bestselling author Jussi Adler-Olsen returns as Detective Carl Mørck and his Department Q team delve into a cold case that turns into more than they may be able to handle… 

In 1987, Nete Hermansen plans revenge on those who abused her—especially Curt Wad, a surgeon who was part of a movement to sterilize wayward girls in the 1950s. More than twenty years later, Detective Carl Mørck already has plenty on his mind when he is presented with the case of a brothel owner, a woman named Rita, who went missing in the eighties: New evidence has emerged in the case that sent Carl to Department Q.

But when Carl’s assistants, Assad and Rose, learn that numerous other people disappeared around the same weekend as Rita, Carl takes notice. Sifting through the evidence, they inch closer to Curt Wad, who is still committed to his twisted beliefs, and whose treatment of Nete only hints at his capacity for evil.

Detective Carl Mørck and his colleagues Assad and Rose must use all of their resources to uncover the horrifying truth in this heart-pounding Nordic thriller from the #1 international bestselling author Jussi Adler-Olsen.

Carl Mørck holds in his hands a bottle that contains old and decayed message, written in blood. It is a cry for help from two young brothers, tied and bound in a boathouse by the sea. Could it be real? Who are these boys, and why weren’t they reported missing? Could they possibly still be alive?

Carl’s investigation will force him to cross paths with a woman stuck in a desperate marriage—her husband refuses to tell her where he goes, what he does, how long he will be away. For days on end she waits, and when he returns she must endure his wants, his moods, his threats. But enough is enough. She will find out the truth, no matter the cost to her husband—or to herself…

Copenhagen’s Detective Carl Mørck is back and ready for action in the second Department Q novel from the “new ‘it’ boy of Nordic Noir” (The Times, London).

Carl Mørck has settled into Department Q and is ready to take on another cold case. This time, it’s the brutal double-murder of a brother and sister two decades earlier. One of the suspects confessed and is serving time, but it’s clear to Mørck that all is not what it seems. Kimmie, a homeless woman with secrets involving certain powerful individuals, could hold the key—if Mørck can track her down before they do…

Get to know the detective in charge of Copenhagen’s coldest cases in the first electrifying Department Q mystery from New York Times bestselling author Jussi Adler-Olsen.

Carl Mørck used to be one of Denmark’s best homicide detectives. Then a hail of bullets destroyed the lives of two fellow cops, and Carl—who didn’t draw his weapon—blames himself. So a promotion is the last thing he expects. But Department Q is a department of one, and Carl’s got only a stack of cold cases for company. His colleagues snicker, but Carl may have the last laugh, because one file keeps nagging at him: a liberal politician vanished five years earlier and is presumed dead. But she isn’t dead…yet.

Darkly humorous, propulsive, and atmospheric, The Keeper of Lost Causes introduces American readers to the mega-bestselling series fast becoming an international sensation.