The Boy In The Suitcase

    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