What could two Danish children’s literature writers possibly know about crime novels? Apparently more than a bit, since their collaboration on a new Nordic noir series has created quite a stir.
The Boy in the Suitcase, the first book in the Nina Borg trilogy, introduces the Copenhagen Red Cross nurse whose strong sense of social justice and helping illegal refugees gets her into all sorts of trouble.
In this initial outing, Nina is asked by another nurse to take a key to a public locker at a train station and quickly remove a large suitcase. Nina is told that she’ll have to take good care of the container’s contents.
When she opens the large, heavy suitcase Nina finds a drugged three-year-old child crammed into it. Afraid to turn the child over to the authorities--she realizes something is very wrong here, and she doesn’t want the youngster to fall back into the hands of the person responsible for this atrocity--Nina begins to do some digging trying to discover who the child is.
Then the woman who passed the key on to Nina is found dead--and, as they say, all hell breaks loose. What follows next is a chase across Denmark, with the child’s mother pursuing Nina and her child, themselves fleeing the youngster’s kidnapper who wants him back.
Not only did this novel win the Harald Morgensen Award for Best Danish Thriller of the Year when it appeared in 2008; it was also shortlisted for the Scandinavian Glass Key Award for crime fiction—which The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest won.