The Boy in the Suitcase (Nina Borg, #1) in Around the World in 80 Books

Nov 25, 2021 Stil de scriitor rated it liked it · review of another edition

Subiectul cărții este unul interesant, cel al traficului cu copii. Insa am inceput cartea intr-o seara, inainte de culcare, iar a doua zi a trebuit sa citesc iar inceputul...atat de derutant mi s-a parut. Sunt multe personaje prezentate inca de la inceput si aparent nu au legătură unul cu altul. Dar apoi se face lumina si acțiunea prinde contur. Nu spun ca mi-a displăcut cartea, dar modul in care a fost scrisă m-a derutat putin. Insa daca vreti un thriller altfel, merita sa ii dati o sansa. Doar ...more

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Apr 27, 2020 Pam rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-books-read, crime-fiction, denmark

AUTHOR Kaaberbol, Lene & Friis, Agnette
TITLE The Boy In The Suitcase
DATE READ 04/26/20
RATING 4/B
FIRST SENTENCE
GENRE/ PUB DATE/PUBLISHER / # OF Crime Fiction/2011/audio- libby/ 8 hr 40 min
SERIES/STAND-ALONE #1 Nina Borg
CHALLENGE Good Reads 2020 Reading Goal 75/120;
GROUP READ
TIME/PLACE 2011/ Denmark
CHARACTERS Nina Borg/Red Cross Nurse
COMMENTS Very good and will read on in this series. Nina has responsibilities as a nurse, wife and mother … she is also quite a human rights activist and le ...more

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Apr 09, 2019 Nadine in NY Jones rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery, suspense-thriller, translation, audio, crime, mystery-nord

3.5 stars

People who put little children in suitcases do not, Nina thought, care terribly about their wellfare.

I liked this book more and more as I read.

Initially, I was a little frustrated. The story jumps around from character to character A LOT, a few paragraphs with this person, a few with another person, and so on. (This made it almost impossible to follow the audiobook, so I switched to ebook, and I could follow it okay.) I found it a bit disconcerting, probably because most of the char 3.5 stars

People who put little children in suitcases do not, Nina thought, care terribly about their wellfare.

I liked this book more and more as I read.

Initially, I was a little frustrated. The story jumps around from character to character A LOT, a few paragraphs with this person, a few with another person, and so on. (This made it almost impossible to follow the audiobook, so I switched to ebook, and I could follow it okay.) I found it a bit disconcerting, probably because most of the characters are so unlikeable.

But then, all of the various plot threads start to come together, into one big multicolored ball of threads, tangled and knotted, tighter and tighter. It became difficult to put the book down. My toes curled with anxiety as I sat here reading it. I stopped caring so much about various stupid things the characters had done, and I just wanted them to get away, get free, don't get caught.

It was interesting that so much action was packed into basically a 24 hour time period (maybe a bit more, but less than two days, anyway). I'm generally frustrated when amateurs neglects to just call the police but a good reason was given: Nina didn't want the boy to get lost in the refugee camps, where he could easily be re-kidnapped by the thug she spied attacking the luggage lockers. Each time she came close to involving the authorities, something scares her off. Since the action all takes place in one day, I accepted that; I expect she would have eventually ended up with the police if things went on too long.

There were things I wish had been handled differently - the authors seem to be trying hard to create a character of Nina Borg, but she's more of a supporting character to this story, and most of her own background information felt shoehorned in awkwardly (especially the bit at the end about her father - that had nothing to do with anything, and didn't belong in this book).

I was confused at first about who was who, because Jan and Jucas were too similar (basically, both are vaguely sociopathic assholes whose names begin with J). Here is a spoiler-free breakdown of the four main characters and their partners:
* Nina Borg and her husband Morten
* Sigita and her ex, Darius
* Jan and his wife Anne
* Jucas and his girlfriend Barbara
Also, I'm not sure if this counts as a spoiler, but it took me a long time to figure out that Sigita and Jucas live in Lithuania, and Nina and Jan live in Denmark. As an English speaker/reader, I thought it was interesting that the only common language the Danes and Lithuanians had was English, so their conversations had to be in English. I wondered if the original Danish novel had English dialogue for these parts? ...more

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Jan 25, 2020 Tanya rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, format-audiobook

I picked this up for a book reading challenge and I found it interesting about that many layers of the characters in this story. I liked it overall...may not remember many of the details, but some are pretty shocking. Not planning to read a sequel.

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Feb 08, 2025 Ann rated it liked it

Shelves: 2025-aty-52, 2025-sns-50, 2025-atw-8

I'm back in my Scandi noir era. Lene and Jo in the books, Are Murders on TV. ...more

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Sep 19, 2011 Andy Plonka rated it it was amazing

Another interesting Scandinavian mystery, this one has particular interest since it was translated into English by one of the authors. While child abuse or exploitation is never a pleasant subject and novels from this part of the world tend to be gloomy, this writing duo manages to inject a note of hope into their novel.

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Aug 07, 2012 Jessica rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, scandinavian

Some elements of this one are strong (particularly Nina's relationship to her work), but overall it doesn't stand out for me - too much of the story feels similar to other books I've read and it loses some of its punch because of that. ...more

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