Why a Booktrail?
2002/2007: The unsolved cases of Copenhagen’s police department and the workings of the mysterious Department Q in the basement. Intriguing….
Mercy (Department Q1)
What you need to know before your trail
This book was also published as The Keeper of Lost Causes which is yet another apt title for what is essentially a dark book.
2002 – Merete Lynggaard is well known politician who is used to being followed and photographed yet she is someone who likes to keep her private life private. Especially when she has family secrets she wants to keep to herself as she does. Political enemies are one thing but if people knew more about her, she might have a few more interested parties into her past.
In 2007 – Detective Carl Morck is what you would call an unpopular and grumpy man who is assigned to work in the basement of the police station – Dept Q looking into cold cases.
Department Q is to be his new home and he’s not happy about it
Travel Guide
The first and most chilling setting of this novel is the pressure chamber where a victim is trapped inside at the outset –
“She scratched her fingertips on the smooth walls until they bled, and pounded her fists on the thick panes until she could no longer feel her hands”
The darkness is described as thundering and she screams until her ears are ringing yet one day she vows to get out of there. Then the novel cuts to 2007 where we meet Carl and delve into another dark and mysterious chamber – but this time its the basement of the local police station knows as Department Q.
Department Q is that cold distant and darkest corner deep down in the basement of the police station. Not the kind of place a policeman would want to be – the cases are colder and even more dead that the corpses themselves.
Assad, a Syrian immigrant who is to be Carl’s main help and side kick in the story. Not being fluent in Danish doesn’t help the man yet the interaction between the pair creates an interesting angle and some of the more humourous sides to the book .
The city is explored from every side of its dark nature – parks are scenes of crimes and nice areas such as Frederiksberg is described as ‘Copenhagen’s snooty Frederiksberg district’. Still the investigation takes them in to familiar streets and areas yes, but with a dark undertone ever present.
So as well as the settings of Department Q and the Syrian angle, the suffocating chamber and a voice of a cold case echoing from the past, this is a picture of the dark side of Copenhagen.
Streetview Maps
1) Copenhagen - Police Station
2) Copenhagen - Danish parliament
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