5 Mysteries You'll Want to Finish in One Night
Cold
cases, Danish detectives and Laura Lippman—what else could a reader
want? Besides, that is, the flawed yet lovable detective and the killer you
never saw coming.
4 of 5
Death of a Nightingale
By Agnete Friis, (Trans. from the Danish by Elisabeth Dyssegaard), Lene Kaaberbøl
368 pages;
Soho Crime
Dedicated to the point of obsession, Danish Red Cross Nurse Nina Borg channels all of her
energy into Coal-House Camp, a Copenhagen
refugee center. There
she connects with the
anxious, mostly
mute, 8-year-old
Ukranian girl, Katerina, whose mother, Natasha, is on the run. Accused of
murdering her fiancé, Natasha finally turns to Nina
to protect Katerina and prove her own innocence. Alternating with the mother-daughter saga is the story of two sisters growing
up more than half a century earlier under the iron fist of "Uncle
Stalin" in
1930s Soviet Union. How the lives of these four women and one child intersect and influence each
other makes Kaaberbøl and Friis's third installment
such a moving story. The two tell a socially
conscious—and, at times, critical—tale about immigration issues that
apply both to Denmark and the U.S., without sacrificing the urgency
of the best thrillers. Even
more intriguing is Borg—a crusader, a
feisty and prickly seeker of justice who, "in her most glacial
voice," asks: "What the hell makes you think that I am anybody's victim?"
— Jordan Foster
Published 03/23/2014