Haunted by a range of personal issues, while still blaming himself after the botched police raid that resulted in the death of a colleague, stone-faced Copenhagen-based lead detective Carl Mørck gets demoted to Department Q: the gloomy, underground division of cold cases. As the head of a government initiative aiming to solve knotty, long-forgotten incidents from all over Denmark, Carl half-heartedly sifts through endless case files with the vault's insightful caretaker Assad. Before long, the mismatched partners are investigating the unaccountable disappearance of Merete Lynggaard, an up-and-coming young politician. What happened to Merete? Who made her vanish into thin air--and why?—Nick Riganas