Monday Book Recs: The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis

I have become more and more interested in the flexibility and structure of mystery over the last couple of years. People say all the time that fantasy and science fiction are so flexible and can contain any other frame of story underneath the trappings of world building. I think the same can be said for mystery. You can tell a lot of other stories within a mystery, and one of the things I like best about mystery is the enduring detective-like character who grows and changes in the background as the mystery goes on. I love how there are moments in the best mysteries when you realize why this mystery can only be solved by this detective and why this mystery matters most or will hurt most for this detective. In the end, I think the best mysteries are really character stories, though my husband will disagree with me on this vehemently. For him, he is bored by the “real life” diversions of mystery novels and detective shows on TV and wants the mystery itself to be more pure. He loves the episodic nature and the clear plot. To each his own, I suppose.

That said, I have only read this one book in this series so that limits my perspective on the character. The mystery itself is fascinating, a young three year old boy found drugged but alive in a suitcase. Where did he come from? Why has he been smuggled into the country? How to help him back to his mother, if he has one? The story of the mother, the two villains of the piece, and the other characters who end up being hurt as the plan dissolves are well done. But it is the main character, the detective Nina Borg, who is a Red Cross nurse, who is the standout here for me. She is a clearly flawed character, and she doesn't do at all what you might expect. She doesn't call the police or let the boy be put in foster care until someone else figures out what to do. She risks her own family by taking off and having to be the hero. And she is the hero.

But she is also a woman with a deeply compromised psyche. We see why she is the way she is. We see what it costs her husband and children for her to be a hero. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the flawed hero here. I love that she is a woman. I love that she is a mother, and that she is drawn to help this child because she is a mother. I love that her own story of motherhood is so complex, and that she isn't just a warm, perfect mother as so many mothers have to be. She is a lousy mother of her own children and yet she still is driven by motherly instincts. Just not only those instincts. I love that we have a female detective who doesn't have to be the perfect mother. She has flashes of memory about her own children when they were small and her sense of helplessness and desire to escape which I think many women relate to, and very rarely find validated in fiction about women and mothers.

I'm glad to see that there is a publisher (Soho) who is willing to put out these novels in America (they were originally published in Danish). I hope to read more of the series. Who knows, maybe I will learn Danish and read them in the original? Although in this case, I did not feel like I was tripping over awkward translations very often. Maybe I only feel that in German translations, since I know the language all too well. Or maybe the translator here is particularly apt. I tend to favor a less direct translation method and aim for a more loose, literary style. This is a gritty book, but I didn't think it was more violent than the typical.