Death of a Nightingale, by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis, trans. Elisabeth Dyssegaard -book review: Latest Nina Borg mystery grips despite its contrived plot
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Your support makes all the difference.Recent news reports of unrest in Ukraine, once part of Stalin's Soviet Union, remind us of the troubled present and past of this country, a topic that runs throughout this noir Scandinavian thriller.
Death of a Nightingale opens with a woman telling a child a story, at the end of which she concludes that, "In Stalin Land, Stalin decides what is true and what is a fairy tale." Thus the themes of what is truth and the consequences of revelation saturate the action from the start.
Ukranian Natasha Doroshenko is under arrest in Copenhagen for the suspected murder of her Danish fiancé. She uses her considerable powers of improvisation to escape, heading to the Red Cross centre where her eight-year-old daughter, Katerina, is staying while her mother is in custody.
Looking after Rina is Danish Red Cross nurse Nina Borg, who has taken an interest in the case after trying to help Natasha leave her abusive fiancé before he was killed. She's not convinced Natasha is guilty, but, as she discovers, there's much she doesn't know, including that her husband in the Ukraine was also murdered.
A sense of mystery and threat looms large over the gloomy, ice-bound landscape as the net cast by the Danish secret service, Ukranian special agents and shadowy underworld figures draws ever tighter. Who is the Witch and why is she trying to abduct Katerina? Who is Anna, Natasha's Danish neighbour? And if Natasha didn't kill both her husband and fiancé, who did and why?
The answers lie in the parallel narrative of Olga and Oxana, two young girls growing up in a famine-stricken 1934 Stalinist Ukraine. Their fight to survive rips their lives and those of their family apart, and their story rushes headlong towards Natasha's in the book's dramatic conclusion.
Written by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis, and translated into English by Elisabeth Dyssegaard, Death of a Nightingale is the latest entry in their Nina Borg series. Strong female characters abound – Natasha stopping at nothing to protect her daughter.
For all its page-turning compulsion and oppressive atmosphere, the plot often feels contrived – as when the Danish secret service lose a child from a "safe" house. And despite Nina and Natasha's ups and downs, the characterisation doesn't quite engage.
The most telling sentence comes in the acknowledgements at the end of the book: "– and thank you also to our Ukranian friends who have wished to remain anonymous." Stalin's legacy of fear still stalks their country's troubled present, it seems.
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