Could you imagine opening a suitcase and finding a tiny little boy inside? What would you do?I really enjoyed this one. It's been at the top of my tbr for what feels like forever, and I can finally replace it with another older book that I haven't gotten to yet. Nina Borg- a red cross nurse in Denmark gets sucked into an ill advised plan when she opens the locker containing the aforementioned suitcase. This one moved at a pretty fast pace, and rotated between the cast of characters narrating the...

Initial thoughts: What an intriguing read! While I predicted the twist from approximately halfway through, I still greatly enjoyed the journey. This book is very fast paced and much easier to read than other Nordic Noir fiction I've read. --- Synopsis Nina Borg's old friend Karin gives her a key and tells her to follow her vague instructions, to go to the train station to pick up what's in a locker, no questions asked. When Nina does this, she finds a suitcase with a tiny three-year-old boy

Another entry in the Scandinavian mystery/thriller category. This one was very good and not nearly as violent as Steig Larsson's first book (I prefer the lower violence levels). Will read the next book then see if this is a series I want to stick with. This book had lots of characters moving in and out. I did not pay close enough attention to this in the beginning, so sometimes was confused about who was related to whom. I'll do better on the next book!

I liked the story line but that's about it. I don't think it was executed well enough for my tastes or maybe I am judging this book rather harshly after just reading two great books. This is a list of problems I had with this book: 1)I did not like the way the characters were introduced in the book. 2)I do not like keeping track off too many characters that just kept cropping out at the beginning of the book without any idea of how they related to one other. 3)Every chapter was a new character w...

A three-year old Lithuanian boy is kidnapped;his single mother tries desperately to find him. Meanwhile, in Denmark, a nurse named Nina Borg finds him in a suitcase and sets out to find his family. Will mother and child be reunited?The point of view skips between various characters and countries. The effect is to create suspense: how will all these characters be brought together? The multiple perspectives also humanize the characters, even the villains. My problem with the book is the character

First I have to say---what a tremendous book! I don't usually read thrillers---I usually find them too stressful to read on top of everything else I have to deal with in life---and also the title threw me off initially because reading about atrocities done to children is not something I want to read about (if the last bit throws you off too, take it from me as someone who can't read that sort of stuff, you will be surprised when you open this book what it actually turns out to be---I can't say m...

This is just what I needed right now. I've been in such a reading slump that I feel like everything that I've tried to read has just dragged on forever. I don't know if it's the new job or what, but it's been making me crazy to feel like I've been going through the motions of reading without actually feeling or caring about most of what I've read. There've been exceptions, but it's mostly just been a slog of book after book that I just want to be done with so I can try something else. So this wa...

The Boy in the Suitcase is yet another Scandinavian crime novel (this one from Denmark), and it's a solid thriller, but there's nothing that makes it too terribly memorable with the exception of the nearly unbelievable stupidity of one of the main characters, Nina Borg.Nina is an educated woman, a nurse, but time after time in this novel, she makes unbelievably stupid decisions. Of course, had she made common-sense choices--nothing requiring great wisdom, just simple common sense--then there wou...

Remember "it was a dark and stormy night ..." the headline that grabs your attention and leaves you a little jumpy, wondering what's around the next corner? That's THIS book! I loved this book literally AT THE TITLE.I wanted to know - what boy? Why was he in a suitcase? Alive? Or Not?This book is John Hart meets Stieg Larsson! Even though this book started out a bit confusing - the characters are jumbled together and introduced a little haphazardly, I found that part of the intrique! It does s

Rate 2 ½ stars. Nina Borg, Red Cross nurse, wife and mother of two to the rescue! Reviewer's continually compare this to Steig Larson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” Both are action packed by respected Danish authors. It is a really satisfying account of the rescue of an abducted child. My low rating is based on the writing style rather than the plot. It did not flow well, choppy and difficult to follow. In any event it’s still worth reading if this is your genre.

Scandinavian noir, this time from Denmark. This was the first of four novels in the Nina Borg series. A super-wealthy Danish man sends his assistant to the train station lockers to pick up a package. It’s a suitcase with a three-year old boy inside, asleep and drugged. His assistant, paralyzed about what to do, calls Nina, the heroine of the series. The assistant ends up brutally murdered and Nina becomes responsible for the boy. Nina, like the reader, has no idea at this point what is going on....

When the book first starts it is a little confusing, trying to figure out who is in what country, but easier as the book goes on and more is revealed. Very well written, with building suspense and a slow reveal. Although what is going on we know from the beginning but the why of it remains a mystery until almost the end.

A young boy is abducted in Lithuania. Red Cross nurse Nina finds him stuffed inside a suitcase in a railway station in Denmark, and begins the dangerous task of trying to unravel the mystery of who put him there and why.This is more of a 3.5 stars to me. The pacing of the book is good and I enjoyed the multiple perspectives employed throughout. The mystery is intriguing and I found myself really identifying with parts of Nina's character- more specifically, her quirky, disordered thinking, and I...

This was an outstanding psychological thriller set in Denmark with a main character you could not help but care about and yet be frustrated by at the same time. Nina, a nurse at the local camp for foreign refugees, also secretly helps out illegal immigrants with medical emergencies. These people, ill or injured, cannot visit the hospital or regular doctors no matter how badly off they are health-wise. Should they do so, they would be reported to the authorities and then shipped back to the horri...

Danish writer Lene Kaaberbol’s 2008 novel The Boy in the Suitcase, originally published as Drengen i kufferten, introduces us to the very original mystery heroine Nina Borg.Neither a police detective nor a prosecutor, Nina is a Red Cross nurse working in a welfare clinic, down in the trenches dealing with domestic violence and substance abuse. I liked her and I was digging how Kaaberbol put this unique but contextually understandable protagonist and crime situation together. A little three-year-...

An excellent book! What is about the Scandinavian/Northern European mystery/thriller writers? This book is set in Denmark and the main character is an aid nurse dealing with immigrants. Immigrants in Europe are a touchy subject, a bit like the Hispanic/Mexican illegal immigrants to this country. The story deals with dark topics and is very gritty. Much grittier, I have to admit, than my view of what Denmark is really like. A boy is found in a suitcase. What was he doing there? Who put him there?...

This is my first Nina Borg story and may not be the last. The plot and the characters were interesting but the mystery took all of a minute to figure out. My biggest concern about the story is that I found myself thinking of the story based on the Hitchcock term McGuffin, which is an object whose sole importance is its ability to drive the story's plot forward. Party A steals the McGuffin from Party B. Party C ends up with the McGuffin and tries to find where it belongs while keeping it away fro...

I'm quitting this book. It might be interesting, it might not, but I really don't like four different point of views for telling a story. Twenty-two pages in, five chapters and four characters; it's a nauseating whirl. This isn't the first time I've seen this technique, it was another Nordic Noir book too, maybe it's a regional style issue, but I hate it.

The Boy in the Suitcase is yet another entry in the growing catalog of Scandinoir coming to these shores, and in many ways fits the general pattern: a socially maladapted protagonist, evil doings involving underage victims, societal rot, Eastern European villains, heat waves. That its central figure isn’t a police detective doesn’t move it very far out of the middle of this particular stream.Nina Borg (that protagonist) is a Danish Red Cross nurse who allows herself to be badgered by her slightl...

I love a good mystery/thriller, but I didn’t love this. The blurb sounded excellent, and the prologue immediately caught my attention. However, when I got to the 24% mark without really getting to a crime or feeling any thrills, it was time to move on. The focus of the book is on the lowest common denominator, and for someone like me who reads to take a break from everyday life, it just wasn’t pleasurable. The characters and plot were confusing, as the timeline shifted here and there and it was