Buried (Department Q 5)

Author/Guide: Jussi Adler-Olsen

Why a Booktrail?

2008: The fifth case for the intriguingly named Department Q of the Copenhagen police. Also known as The Marco effect.

ISBN: 978-1405909808
Translator: Martin Aitken
Genre: Crime, Hitman/Gangster

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What you need to know before your trail

Over three years ago, a civil servant vanished after returning from a work trip to Africa. Missing, presumed dead, the man’s family still want answers.

Now a cold case, this is just one on the pile that Carl Morck has to deal with as head of Department Q of the Copenhagen Police force.

The key to the investigation seems to be right at the heart of the city of Copenhagen itself and in the grasp of a 15 year old sleeping rough. Young Marco is a street smart young man running from something. But can Carl get to him before anyone else does?

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This may be the fifth case that the Department Q has had to solve yet the basement within the deep dark recesses of the Copenhagen police is still as soulless and unhappy as ever. Now that the duo of Carl Morck and his sidekick Assad is in full swing, the humour is still to be found, and the working relationship now developed. But the Department Q still has a difficult case load to try and work through. The case here is one of a young boy – Marco, an illegal immigrant who is running from Zola, the ‘godfather’ as he is known since he wants to injure the boy in order to make his begging on the streets more lucrative. The case of the missing politician soon becomes intertwined with Marco’s chances of survival.

Indeed the setting here is the criminal underworld and the city’s illegal immigrants who hope that Copenhagen will be some kind of calm oasis but then it turns out to be anything but. There is a root of evil in every kind of society and the one here seems to be that of the financial kind as money is being laundered instead of being allowed to help other countries as aid.

Copenhagen here is the city where one single spark of suspicion can lead to Department Q unravelling the very threads of Copenhagen society most people don’t see. Takes you back to 2008 and the financial meltdown of one city amongst many. How one moment of greed can create a landslide and how one case can have wide and far-reaching consequences.

Copenhagen is shown here as being the centre of a stone being thrown into a financial mess and the ripples of which led Carl Mørck and his colleagues to Copenhagen and Africa’s dark and dangerous side.