#87 The Boy In The Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis – Blog Tour + GIVEAWAY!

Audio-book fans listen up!! Reflections of a Book Addict is kicking off a five stop blog tour for AudioGO’s audio-book release of The Boy In The Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis, narrated by Katherine Kellgren.  With the Swedish crime novel kick Todd and I have been on, we jumped at the chance to listen and review the first novel in the Nina Borg chronicles.

I’m stealing the summary of the novel off of AudioGO’s website, because it saves me from revealing too much of the mystery!

Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse, wife, and mother of two, is trying to live a quiet life. The last thing her husband wants is for her to go running off on another dangerous mission to help illegal refugees. But when Nina’s estranged friend Karin leaves Nina a key to a public locker in the Copenhagen train station and begs her to take care of its contents, Nina gets suckered into her most dangerous case yet. Because inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy: naked and drugged, but alive. Nina’s natural instinct is to rescue the boy, but she knows the situation is risky. Is the boy a victim of child trafficking? Can he be turned over to authorities, or will they only return him to whoever sold him? In an increasingly desperate trek across Denmark, Nina tries to figure out who the boy is, where he belongs, and who exactly is hunting him down. When Karin is discovered brutally murdered, Nina realizes that her life and the boy’s are in jeopardy, too.

Kim: Right from the get go this novel takes off like a bat out of hell.  A naked, drugged, three-year-old is found in a suitcase shoved in a locker in a train station.  How can you kick a novel off better than that?  Why is he there?  Who put him there?  You start listening to this novel and already have 1,000 questions running through your mind that make you all the more interested and invested in the plot.

Todd: Kaaberbøl and Friis create a wonderfully detailed cast of characters that they expound on to give the listener an amazingly good sense of the backgrounds of these individuals and what drives their actions and feelings.  I really enjoy when authors do this and I can really get a sense of what kind of person the character is in order to put them in context of the plot.

Kim: I definitely agree that the writing is top-notch.  I’ve often found that in these types of twisted crime novels, the writing has to be superb in order for the novel to work.  Without intelligent language, it would just fall flat.  Also, we can’t forget to give credit to Katherine Kellgren for a job well done in narrating this work.  You can tell that she put a lot of time and effort into making sure that words not in her native tongue were pronounced properly and accurately.  Narrators that take this extra step make the novel that much more realistic and gripping.

Todd: I have to echo Kim’s statements about the narrator.  Of course, I think it’s also a staple that the person be British, because who doesn’t love a calming British accent?  Anyway, if you happen to be a fan of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, this is definitely not a book to miss.  With thrilling accounts of murder and suspense that lurk in each chapter, you’ll find yourself glued to the spoken words, anxiously waiting to see what happens to The Boy in the Suitcase.

Kim’s Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Todd’s Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

The Boy In The Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis
AudioGO (2011)
CD: 8hrs 40min
ISBN: 9781609986582

Blog Tour!

Jill over at AudioGO has been kind enough to offer us a clip of the first chapter of The Boy In the Suitcase.  You can find the remaining pieces of the first chapter at each stop on the blog tour.  (Info below)  Without further ado, here’s the beginning of chapter one…

To hear the remainder of chapter one (and for more giveaway chances) visit the rest of the blogs hosting the blog tour:

12/13/11 – The Haunting of Orchid Forsythia

12/14/11 – Teresa’s Reading Corner

12/15/11 – The Literate Housewife 

12/16/11 – Devourer of Books

Our Giveaway

Two lucky winners will have the opportunity to win an audio-book version each of The Boy In the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis.  For your chance to win simply leave a comment in the thread below.  Comments will be accepted through midnight of Tuesday, December 20, 2011.  Winners will be picked at random and announced on Wednesday, December 21, 2011.  Giveaway open to residents of US only.  Good luck!

Special thanks to Jill at AudioGO for our review copy, and for including us on this fabulous blog tour!