Exciting. Couldn't put it down. Ready for the next one!

There was less Nina Borg, and more descriptions of sexual violence than the first book, but even so, I didn't want to put this book down.

Invisible Murder is the second installment in the Nina Borg series and I enjoyed it quite a bit more than the first.

In this installment, Nina isn't as "bleeding heart" or annoying (I was a little tired of her by the end of the first book - so many irritatingly irresponsible decisions)! She definitely felt more "real" this time and not as over-the-top with her actions and she garnered more sympathy from me as the reader.

This story, like its predecessor, had many characters and the chapters bounced between different sets' of characters point of view. The authors tell the story well this way - keeping the reader on his/her feet, never giving away quite enough until the very end!

One of the aspects I like about this genre, Nordic Noir, is that it is often based on crimes against humanity and how easily it is to fall into the trappings of that dark world - it isn't always the most obvious of suspects.

I also enjoy the foreign aspect of the story and the setting. The authors do a good job of bringing the world to eyes that may have never seen it personally.

After the first book, I wasn't sure that I would continue very far into this series; however, after this book, I plan to follow these authors through for more!

Took a while to get going and I was wondering how all the story lines were going to come together, but come together they did

Nav ne mazākās nojausmas, ko rakstīt atsauksmēs. Labāka par "Zēnu koferī" šī noteikti bija, taču vēl vienu zvaigzni nesavāca.

Edit: Izdomāju, ko teikt: http://vakardiena.blogspot.com/2014/04/klusa-nemanama-slepkaviba-lene.html

Invisible Murder, co-written by Danish authors Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, features Red Cross nurse Nina Borg, a character the pair introduced in their highly acclaimed 2011 debut novel. That novel, The Boy in the Suitcase, in addition to being a New York Times bestseller, was named best Danish Thriller of the Year, a New York Times Notable Crime Book, and was nominated for several other literary awards.

In addition to the work she does for the Red Cross at a large refugee camp, Nina is still tied into “the Network,” a group of doctors, nurses, and advocates that provides off-the-grid care and help to those in the country illegally. Many of the people she sees through her “Network” are Eastern Europe gypsies forced to endure atrocious living conditions as they try to stay under the radar of Copenhagen authorities long enough to scam the city’s citizens out of some of their money.

Nina’s husband, a North Sea geologist, approves of her clandestine services, asking only that she not take that risk while he is away working on an offshore oil rig (the couple have a teen daughter and young son). Nina, however, because she finds it impossible to ignore the plight of sick children, decides to make one quick visit, despite her husband’s absence, to the neglected Copenhagen garage within which several Hungarian gypsy families have taken shelter. Bad mistake.

Not only is Nina unable to identify the illness that is causing the children to vomit and dehydrate to the point of delirium, she develops the same symptoms and is hospitalized in critical condition. In the meantime, Copenhagen security personnel are frantically searching for the young man Nina was originally called about, fearing that he has smuggled the makings of a deadly terrorist weapon into Denmark.

The plot of Invisible Murder is a complicated one in which the authors give equal weight to what is happening simultaneously in the lives of four very different sets of characters. The story alternates between Nina’s efforts to help the gypsy children; the frantic attempts of Danish Security to crack what they believe is a terrorist network; a young man’s search for his younger brother, who happens to be the same boy Danish authorities are so desperate to find; and the everyday life of an ailing old man and his younger wife.

Although Invisible Murder might require a little patience on the part of the reader, it will reward those who do not become frustrated enough to stop reading. Admittedly, because it can be difficult to keep track of some of the Scandinavian character and place names (a common problem encountered by readers of translated novels), keeping a descriptive list of characters as they are introduced will make it easier to keep up with the novel’s many interrelated plot twists. You will be happy that you stayed with Invisible Murder to the end.

The follow-up novel to The Boy in the Suitcase carries the same powerful sense of suspense and again uses a mystery novel format to tell a story about a social issue that will feel uncomfortably familiar to readers. In the case of Invisible Murder, Kaaberbol and Friis shine a bright and harsh light on xenophobic, anti-Muslim and anti-Romany sentiments in Europe. As in the last book, the ways in which children suffer are particularly highlighted.

I would say Invisible Murder is more finely-crafted than The Boy in the Suitcase and it does a better job of deeply involving us in all the key characters. It's also possibly more violent and intense, which makes it a more difficult read but also impossible to ignore. It's truly painful to read about the tough choices Nina Borg has to make between providing medical assistance to dying undocumented Romani children and between devoting herself fully to her own children.

Nothing is oversimplified in this story but the complex struggles the characters face and the surprising solution to the main mystery don't get in the way of the overarching social message about the dangers of racism and intolerance.

I really like the Boy in the Suitcase, so I was looking forward to this second book, but unfortunately this book is more like a cliche of the first book. the bad guys have no element to explain them, Nina has gone further away from believable.
plus- I have trouble with the notion of the book, that Nina is the good guy.
what's the point of trying to save the world if you sacrifice your own family?
I did like the "surprise" ending, although I saw it coming in some form.

Another excellent novel in this series, though, like the first, rather dark. And it's true, for many that's the way life is. So I sit here, reading dark novels and thanking my lucky stars that I personally have not had to face the situations that Nina has to, nor have I had to choose whether to risk my marriage because of the needs of others.

Nina is a nurse in Copenhagen and helps out at a centre for refugees. She has also helped in the past a chsp who runs an illegal railroad for similar people. Because of events in the first book, Nina's husband has made her promise not to respond to requests from that man unless he, the husband, is at home. He works 2 weeks out of 4 away from home.

This story also involves some Roma people, both in Hungary and Denmark (and we see the appalling prejudice still held against them), and trafficking in radioactive materials.