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A review by cemoses
The Boy in the Suitcase by Agnete Friis, Lene Kaaberbøl
3.0
On the whole I liked this book. In particular, I liked the sleuth, Nina Borg. I found it refreshing that a nurse was the heroine. Nurses seem more human and hands on then physicians and are not as tough as the female police. Nina Borg is not some master technocrat who magically can draw on some scientific evidence the reader knows nothing about to solve the mystery. I like amateur detectives.
Nina Borg is a nurse who can find her home life difficult but has a heart of gold and as a taste for danger when it comes to her work. It is a good premise for a series.
The book has a slow start. It takes too long to introduce Nina and the other main characters. I found the middle suspenseful. However, the ending was a bit of a letdown and I felt there were too many loose ends. The book leaves many unanswered questions. For example, it answers the question of WHY there was a boy in a suitcase but not HOW he was smuggled across country lines. In many mysteries, how things are done is usually a big part of mysteries.
The form of storytelling these series uses I don't think is the best. The format is that you have several seemingly unrelated stories that in the end form one story line; I prefer a more straight forward form of storytelling especially in a book that is meant as a light read.
I found this book different from the mystery novels set in Sweden. Many Swedish mysteries debunk Sweden's mystic of being kindly loving somewhat socialist country. These books show the dark side of Swedish life. These mysteries show a country that seems to have many vicious greedy capitalists and a significant number of youth gangs and much domestic violence. In the Steig Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, the Swedish government itself is shown as being highly corrupt.
In contrast in The Boy in the Suitcase, Danish life seems very similar to life in the US. The dark side of the book comes from refugees from the former Soviet Union who come to Denmark and who don't seem to be altogether accepted by the Danish.
Nina Borg is a nurse who can find her home life difficult but has a heart of gold and as a taste for danger when it comes to her work. It is a good premise for a series.
The book has a slow start. It takes too long to introduce Nina and the other main characters. I found the middle suspenseful. However, the ending was a bit of a letdown and I felt there were too many loose ends. The book leaves many unanswered questions. For example, it answers the question of WHY there was a boy in a suitcase but not HOW he was smuggled across country lines. In many mysteries, how things are done is usually a big part of mysteries.
The form of storytelling these series uses I don't think is the best. The format is that you have several seemingly unrelated stories that in the end form one story line; I prefer a more straight forward form of storytelling especially in a book that is meant as a light read.
I found this book different from the mystery novels set in Sweden. Many Swedish mysteries debunk Sweden's mystic of being kindly loving somewhat socialist country. These books show the dark side of Swedish life. These mysteries show a country that seems to have many vicious greedy capitalists and a significant number of youth gangs and much domestic violence. In the Steig Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, the Swedish government itself is shown as being highly corrupt.
In contrast in The Boy in the Suitcase, Danish life seems very similar to life in the US. The dark side of the book comes from refugees from the former Soviet Union who come to Denmark and who don't seem to be altogether accepted by the Danish.