She didn't know how she had gotten lost. The door had been ajar, and they hadn't noticed her standing in the doorway. She had been overcome with joy when she felt the sun warming her and beckoning her, but that was hours ago and now everything had turned cold and unsettling.
-- Narration (Prologue)

Importance: This passage describes the terror felt by Lise Andersen as she flees the de facto jail cell that she had been kept inside by Jørgen and Bodil Parkov. Unlike each of the other chapters in the novel, including the Epilogue, the Prologue does not focus in on Louise or Camilla as the central character. While the third-person limited omniscient narrator focuses on Lise Andersen, the reader does not know the name or the identity of Lise, just as the detectives themselves will not know her name for some time. The Prologue confirms that Lise dies not at the...