Sixth book in Department Q:
In the middle of his usual hard-earned morning nap with his legs on the desk in the basement of the Police Station, Carl Mørck, head of Department Q, receives a call from a colleague from Bornholm.
“Yes, sorry to bother you, but maybe you have some time to listen to me.” But Carl is dismissive when he realizes that he is about to be handed a new case, and then the phone on the other end is just as quietly hung up. Just a few hours later, the consequences are completely unpredictable and Carl's headstrong assistant Rose is more furious than usual.
Hard pressed, he leads Department Q into a seventeen-year-old and extremely tragic case about a young, fun-loving woman who disappeared from her high school and was found hanging dead from a tree.
The extremely down-to-earth Carl now faces a difficult and mysterious investigation, while a skilled manipulator with an iron will protects himself and his loved ones with all available means and doesn't let anyone or anything get in the way.
Along the way and in uncompromising, alternative environments, Rose, Assad, Carl and newcomer Gordon are challenged in every imaginable way, and old cases and secrets threaten to topple the four-leaf clover.
