Customer Reviews

The Boy in the Suitcase

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Nina Borg is a Red Cross nurse with a strong drive to save the world. She's done volunteer nursing in global hotspots. Even now in Copenhagen she belongs to a secret network that gives medical care to illegal refugees.

One day as a favor for a friend she collects a suitcase from a locker - and finds a little boy inside, naked and unconscious. She doesn't dare involve the police, for reasons you'll discover when you read the book. She doesn't dare take the boy home, because they're being hunted. And she can't find out where he came from, because, when he wakes, he speaks a language she can't identify. How will Nina handle this insane situation? Read on...

The creepiest thing about the story is that we wonder, not how the boy came to be in the suitcase, but why. What awful fate was in store for him?

The cast of characters includes rich and poor, thugs and do-gooders, nosy neighbors and frightened kids caught in adult dramas. It took me a while to figure out who was who. The plot skips around between countries and characters. But I finally got my bearings and enjoyed the ride. The interesting personality of Nina the nurse is slow to emerge, but I liked her when I got to know her.

Certainly Nina is a handy person to have around when fists fly and guns go off. She can staunch the flow of blood and dress the wounds. I look forward to seeing her talents at work in the next book in the series!

Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis are a new team in the thriller genre and starting out strong. They tell a gripping and original story.

"The Boy in the Suitcase," by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Fris, is set in Denmark. The first few chapters are confusing; new characters pop up constantly. We know right off the bat that a little boy has been placed in a suitcase, but why? A wealthy man named Jan Marquat lives with his wife and son in a fancy house near a cliff, and it is clear that Jan is very worried. Jucas, an oversized Lithuanian with a fierce temper, has a girlfriend named Barbara whom he hopes to marry. However, he has some unfinished business to take care of before they tie the knot. Another Lithuanian named Sigita Ramoskiene is a single mom who dotes on her three-year-old son, Mikas. Finally, Nina Borg, a nurse who works for the Danish Red Cross Center Furesø, gives aid and comfort to refugees from far-flung places. Although she is married with two children of her own, Nina is an obsessive Good Samaritan who often puts her mission to help those in need ahead of her family's welfare.

Somehow, all of these people are interrelated, but we must wait patiently while the authors connect the dots. Nina, in an attempt to help a friend, winds up trying to protect a terrified toddler who speaks no Danish. She is reluctant to go to the police, since she is leery of authority figures. The authors shift back and forth between Nina, Jan, Jucas, Sigita, and others. We grow to care about the desperate Sigita, whose son has gone missing, and the driven Nina, who is on the run with a youngster she is determined to shield from harm. It eventually becomes apparent that Sigita, Nina, and the little boy are all in grave danger.

Although Kaaberbøl and Fris maintain a high level of suspense, the plot hinges on a twist (revealed at the end) that is melodramatic and far-fetched. Still, we are concerned about the protagonists' welfare and are intensely curious to see how the story will turn out. In addition, the book effectively and movingly explores family conflicts and the emotional pain that loved ones often experience when they argue vehemently. There is a social message here, as well, since Kaaberbøl and Fris strongly criticize what they consider to be the Danish government's callous attitude towards "the broken human lives that washed up on its shores." Therefore, in spite of its over-the-top conclusion, "The Boy in the Suitcase" is a powerful, engrossing, and provocative thriller that further adds to the luster of today's Scandinavian mystery writers.

From start to finish, the only word that I could use to describe this book is intense. From the first paragraph, you are drawn into the life of Nina Borg as she enters a station to retrieve a package for a friend and comes away with a young boy who has been drugged and lying near lifeless in a suitcase.

No, that is not giving away too much since that is pretty much the title of the book, but what the title does not tell you is what got us to this point. Is there more to this story than the obvious dark side of human kind.

Nina Borg is not your usual protagonist, she has some dark secrets of her own and only in future books, do I think, you will see more of what and who she is. Obsessed with her work as a Danish Red Cross nurse and helping immigrant refugees, Nina has seen the good and the bad in people and carries all of their scars; but what Nina finds in the train station locker will spin her world.

There are many storylines going on and the reader is pulled from one to the other knowing that they will all come to a climatic ending. But what ending will it be - as a mother searches for her missing son, a nurse trying to find where a child belongs, and a wealthy man who has set this whole nightmare in motion.

Kaaberbol and Friis know how to bring an intense book to a climatic end. The reader is left with only one thought, "Wow". Riveting and entertaining, this book is a proposed first in a series and I certainly hope that the future storylines will captivate me as this one has

Nina Borg is a wife, a mother of two and a nurse with a penchant for dangerous third-world countries, which often puts her marriage on the rocks as she volunteers in the most dangerous places in the world and doesn't mind breaking the law in her own country to help the helpless.

In this novel, translated from the Danish by Lene Kaaberbok, an old friend Nina has not seen for some time gives her a key to a locker in a Copenhagen train station and asks her to get what's in the locker. When she reaches the train station, the nurse with a heart for refugees discovers a drugged, naked three-year old boy stuffed into a suitcase and she eventually discovers the boy doesn't speak her language, which makes it impossible to discover where he's from.

From the moment she opens that locker, I was hooked. This novel is a thriller with a depth that reaches inside the mind and examines good and evil that lurks inside each person.

As the story progresses, Nina's friend Karin is murdered. After Nina discovers the body, she fears for her life and the life of the child. Soon, the killer is hunting for her.

As we turn pages, we enter Nina's mind, her husband's, the mastermind behind the abduction of the naked child and the brute that kidnapped the child so he could earn enough money to keep the woman he lusts after.

Nina is not afraid to get involved and refuses to quit once she has committed herself. She is a complex character with a challenging home life. She loves her husband and children but neglects them while also neglecting her health. It's almost as if she has a death wish and a penchant for mental anguish on more than one level.

Nina is a character I want to read about again in another story. The stories I enjoy most are gritty and present a puzzle I cannot solve and this one achieved that.

The story shifts from character to character and from Lithuania to Denmark. I also enjoy stories that teach me something, and this one taught me about the ugly and shocking world of child trafficking--every parent's worst nightmare.

________________________

I did not buy this novel. It was an uncorrected proof from the publisher.

A word about the rating system, which I have borrowed/adapted from Alice Wakefield, in an attempt to keep the star rating system meaningful.

* 5 stars are reserved for that rare work that reaches the level of a classic, such as a National Book Award, a Pulitzer or a Nobel Prize winner that compares to a Steinbeck or Mark Twain, which means the author impressed me beyond the average, entertaining book.

* 4 stars from me are high praise, meaning I enjoyed the novel and recommended it.

* 3 stars mean I enjoyed the book and recommend it with some reservations.

This is a story of two mothers fighting to save one little boy: Nina, a Red Cross nurse, finds an unconscious 3-year-old boy in a train station locker just before she is menaced and pursued by a very dangerous-looking man. Clearly the little boy is in terrible danger; she feels she needs to save him. Meanwhile, the boy's biological mother wakes up in the hospital to find her child has been kidnapped, and begins the frustrating and heartbreaking process of trying to track him down.

A very special story, easy to devour and deeply affecting.

As she is overwhelmed at work and in her personal life as a mother of two children, Copenhagen nurse Nina Borg knows she should refuse her friend from nursing school Karin's favor, but agrees to pick up a package from a locker at the train station. Nina takes out the suitcase only to open it and finds a drugged but alive preschooler.

Not sure what to, she observes an angry man who opens the now empty suitcase. Fearing the cops will only take the child back to his seller, Nina leaves with the little boy Mikas who does not speak Danish or any Scandinavian language. She seeks Karin, but learns her friend was violently murdered. While traffickers search for their commodity, Mikas' frantic Lithuanian mother seeks her beloved son too.

This is a fascinating Danish thriller that focuses on human trafficking. Filled with taut suspense from the moment the heroine meets The Boy in the Suitcase, Nina and Mikas flee for their lives unsure who to turn to for help. With a nod to North by Northwest, readers will root for Nina and Mikas as some nasty individuals chase after them.

Harriet Klausner

"The Boy in the Suitcase" is another Scandinavian thriller, this time set in Denmark, particularly Copenhagen, written by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friss. Of course, they too are contestants for the crown of Scandinavian thriller writers, vacated too soon by the untimely death of the Swedish writer Stieg Larsson. He recently gave the world the huge international best selling phenomenon with Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy Bundle: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. BOY/SUITCASE is an entry in the #1 Danish bestselling crime series, centering on Red Cross nurse Nina Borg. It was shortlisted for the Scandinavian Glass Key award for crime fiction.

Borg, the central character of BOY/SUITCASE is also a wife, and mother of two. She has gone off nursing in most of the world's hotspots, leaving her family behind. As you might guess, she's also a compulsive do-gooder who can't say "no" when someone asks for help-- even when she knows better. Her nursing school friend Karin, now estranged, insists on giving Borg the key to a public locker in the Copenhagen train station which she begs Borg to open. Inside is a suitcase containing an apparently three-year-old boy who is naked and drugged, but alive. The boy is not Danish; Borg knows that much. Has he been kidnapped by a family member, or is he a victim of child trafficking? The former category of kidnapped children are generally found sooner or later; the latter category, never alive. Can Borg turn the boy over to the authorities, or will they just return him to whoever sold him? Karin is found brutally murdered; Nina realizes that her life and the boy's may be in jeopardy, too. She takes him on a desperate journey across Denmark while trying to discover his identity, and the whys and wherefores of his kidnapping. Did I mention that I found Borg to be a deeply flawed, somewhat illogical character in that she thinks she is better equipped to help the boy than are the police? Although, of course, every mystery needs a plot.

Initially, it seemed to me that BOY/SUITCASE was yet another installment in the Scandinavian contest to write another MEN WHO HATE WOMEN, the name of the first Swedish publication of GIRL/DRAGON TATTOO; that, despite having been written by two women, the book favored its male characters. I soon found otherwise, and, oh, the power of stereotyping was surprised to discover that the two authors of BOY/SUITCASE were, respectively, a fantasy writer and a children's writer.

And they've written a pretty good thriller here that hooked me from the beginning and kept me turning pages. I was anxious about the little boy's fate. Which I suppose makes this book a chick lit mystery, but I can live with that. The plot is certainly complex and involving enough; dialog is fine, as is the narrative and descriptive writing. We get a decent picture of Copenhagen, its climate, and its citizens. If you can handle a chick lit Scandinavian mystery, this is a good one.

Page turning, entertaining, suspenseful. Hope the movie is to follow. Glad I took a chance on this unknown author. I gave this book four stars because I compare it to all genres. When compared to other suspense novels I would rate this a five.

This was my introduction to authors Kaaberbol and Friis, and it was a wowser! Their intricate plotting, clean, tight, sometimes visceral prose, and characters about whom we care all combine to form an unforgettable thriller, the first in the Nina Borg trilogy.

A Red Cross nurse, Nina is an inveterate do-gooder with an unshakable belief that she can make almost anything better, much to the chagrin of her husband. This combined with her role as a wife and mother often presents her with frightening choices. I should also mention that she is a very good friend for when Karin, last seen gives her a key to a public locker in the Copenhagen train station and implores her to take care of the contents she agrees.

Karin had warned her not to open the suitcase until she left the station. We read, "Nina dragged the suitcase out of the locker. It was heavier than it looked.....not easily carried." Yet she soldiered on until she reached her Fiat at the car-park. It was there that she opened the suitcase and found the boy, perhaps three-years-old, naked, drugged, but alive.

She has no idea where to go or what to do but fears going to the police lest they return the boy to whoever had done this to him. "Dear sweet Jesus," she thought, "Who would do this to a boy?"

The answer to that question takes her on a terrifying chase throughout Denmark as she tries to discover who the boy is and why he was treated so inhumanely. Her fear is heightened when she finds Karin brutally murdered and then knows with certainty that she must not only save the child but herself as well.

Atmospheric, rich with psychological insights, and one of the most frightening villains to inhabit a page The Boy In The Suitcase is an extraordinary crime novel that captures your mind and your heart.

= Gail Cooke

This is a story about a boy. This is a story about the adults who want him, who each see him as the central player in their individual dreams. He is three years old, healthy, beautiful and he is, to some, the answer to a prayer, and, to others, a means to an end.

To his mother, he is Mikas, a Lithuanian, born to Sigita and Darius who are separated, and so he is the child of a single mother for whom he is the world. Every Saturday when the weather is good, Sigita packs a lunch and fills a thermos with coffee and they go to the playground. Mikas runs and plays and, together, they enjoy their picnic. Recently, though, Sigita has become annoyed and wary with the woman in the long summer coat who comes each week to give the little ones chocolate. She upsets Sigita who, finally, demands that the woman stay away from Mikas. Then, one Saturday, Sigita is found unconscious after getting intoxicated to the point of endangering her life. Everyone knows Sigita doesn't drink. Neither she nor anyone else can explain the concussion, the broken arm, and the empty bottle of vodka in her apartment. Neither she nor anyone else can explain or remember who took Mikas away. He hasn't been seen since the playground a few days before. A neighbor tells the police Mikas left with his father but when she is finally pressed for a description, the man who took Mikas looks nothing like Darius.

In the meantime, Nina Borg has been contacted by Karin, her best friend since their school days and through the days when they were training to be nurses. They have lost touch but when Karin calls Nina and begs that she help her, Nina can't refuse. Nina is married and the mother of two children but she has a compulsion to try to bring order to the worst of the world's situations. There isn't anyplace in the throes of revolution or famine or natural disaster that Nina has not been as a nurse working for the Danish Red Cross. Karin appeals to Nina's need to deal with those in trouble and she imposes on Nina to collect a suitcase from a left luggage area of the Central Station. She tells Nina not to open the suitcase until she has left the area of the lockers and not to open it when anyone else is around. Nina is annoyed but does as Karin asks. Nina drags the suitcase to her car and opens it to find a boy, healthy and unharmed, but heavily drugged.

From this point, the cast of characters increases and the motives for their interest become increasingly murky. Nina is too frightened to go home to a husband she loves and trusts. For her, it is she and the boy alone against the world.

THE BOY IN THE SUITCASE is a compelling reading experience. The chapters are short so it is easy to decide to read "just until the end of this chapter" until the end of the chapter is reached and it is necessary to read "just one more." To describe the action and the direction of the story is to tell too much.

What makes the book so compelling is the ethical issues raised by the need to have a child. The needs may be different, the methods may fall between black and white and into shades of gray, and the child may or may not be the ultimate reward but all the motives are understandable and authentic. THE BOY IN THE SUITCASE is outstanding