Loved it! The author is well known in Denmark and has won numerous crime fiction awards. This is the first installment of the Department Q series featuring chief detective Carl Morck.

Carl is a tortured soul having recently been a survivor (feeling guilty that he did survive) in a shooting that killed a fellow detective and left the other paralyzed. He has been "promoted" to the basement to run the newly designed Department Q which will handle Copenhagen's coldest cases. Essentially it is a department of one but Carl demands an assistant and is given Assad, a Muslim, who has escaped a tortured life in Syria and can do just about anything. The first case the two unlikely partners take on involves a five-year-old mystery of a prominent female politician who disappeared off a ferry boat on her way to holiday.

This is such a compelling, "can't put it down" story. I actually liked this book better than the Stieg Larsson books (which I devoured). There are elements of humor and compassion in this book that we don't usually find in crime fiction and they are both very well done. Highly recommend for readers of Jo Nesbo, Henning Mankell, and Stieg Larsson. ~Cindy