Release scheduled for this coming week, first in the projected Nina Borg mystery series, The Boy in the Suitcase * marks the debut of co-authors Lene Kaaberbol (visit the website of this well-respected teen author) and Agnete Friis.

When asked by an estranged friend Karin to help retrieve a suitcase from a locker at the main Copenhagen train station, Nina Borg, Red Cross nurse and a compulsive do-gooder can't refuse. After dragging it home, Nina discovers inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy: naked and drugged, but alive. When Karin is brutally murdered, Nina realizes that her life and the boy's are in jeopardy. In an increasingly desperate trek across Denmark, Nina tries to figure out who the boy is, where he belongs, and who exactly is trying to hunt him down.

Winner of the 2008 Harald Mogensen Award for Best Danish Crime Novel, and a finalist for the Scandinavian Glass Key Award, this fast-paced, suspenseful thriller could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of Scandinavian crime fiction, many also by women writers with strong female protagonists.

* = starred review