Nina Portland is 39 years old. She works as a Detective Inspector with the police in her hometown, Esbjerg, and is a single mother of a ten-year-old son. She is the main character in Jens Henrik Jensen's new thriller, The Axe Ship. While attending a police course in Estonia, Nina Portland stumbles upon the trail of a Russian sailor who was the main suspect in a mysterious case from her first years in the police force. The sailor was charged with murdering the crew of a ship that was found drifting in the North Sea, but he was acquitted because his guilt could not be proven in court. Intent on solving the old mystery, Nina Portland follows the trail. It first leads her into the Estonian winter, then to London and Scotland and back to Esbjerg and her own past, where lies and secrets she didn't know about float to the surface. Nina' private investigation, however, has alerted both the British secret service and Islamic fundamentalists, and when she finally realizes that her wish to settle her account with the past endangers her life, it is too late for her to back out ...