Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is a man guided by intuition, a man who never allows an investigation to interrupt his enjoyment of good beer, wine or food. He is a man who firmly believes he can solve every and any case laid before him. There are no coincidences, and all it comes down to is finding a way to the solution.

When we meet up with the pondering, chess playing inspector in The Inspector and Silence, he is about to make two huge decisions: The first is whether to go to Crete on a summer vacation. The second is about his job: Should he quit and buy a partnership in a used book store in the neighborhood?

His pondering is disturbed when the police receive a call from Sergeant Merwin Kluuge up in the beautiful forested lake-town of Sorbinowo. Kluuge’s tranquil existence has been shattered by an anonymous woman reporting the disappearance of a girl from the summer camp of a religious sect calling themselves Pure Life. The chief inspector agrees to investigate the case, and heads off in his car to the small town of Sorbinowo.

However, initially the slow-moving investigation by the vastly talented Chief Inspector quickly runs into a wall. When he visits the Pure Life camp, he is met with a wall of silence. The strange priest-like figure who leads the sect – Oscar Yellineck – claims that they have no missing girl – all are accounted for and present. So do all the other participants.

Then the anonymous woman calls again. This time she tells the police the location of the body of a dead girl. When the police find the thirteen year old girl, she has been tortured, raped, murdered and left naked in the forest.

But things do not quite add up: The dead girl is one of the girls Van Veeteren met when he visited the camp. Is there another dead girl somewhere? Who is the anonymous woman? How did she know about the body? And – as one more of the girls are found in the same condition: How can the police stop the killings?

Everywhere Van Veeteren turns, there is silence – the members of the sect will not talk. And nobody else seems to know anything. Finally Van Veeteren is forced to draw the conclusion that in order to solve this disturbing case, with all its silence and very few clues, he will have to once more rely on his intuition. And so he heads out, following his intuition, to solve the case.

All the books in the Van Veeteren series are excellent. The Inspector and Silence perhaps even more so than the others. There is something about the quiet way this book is written, and the way this contrasts to the quite brutal case, that is very fascinating to me. This is one of my personal favorites in the series.  Also, it is outstandingly plotted and very suspenseful,  as well as humorous and superbly written.

Links to Hakan Nesser’s books at amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN

These are TV-movies based on Hakan Nesser’s Van Veeteren series. They are based on the following crime fiction novels: Carambole, Munster’s Case, and Borkmann’s Point. Only Borkmann’s Point have so far been translated into English.

• Actors: Chatarina Larsson, Douglas Johansson, Eva Rexed, Frida Westerdahl, Peter Andersson
• Directors: Daniel Lind Lagerlöf, Erik Leijonborg, Rickard Petrelius
• Format: Import, PAL, Box set, Widescreen
• Subtitles: English, Swedish, Danish, Finnish
• Region: Region 2 (Read more about DVD formats.)
• Number of discs: 3
• Studio: SF(Fox)
• Run Time: 276 minutes

Sweden released, PAL/Region 2 DVD. These DVD’s WILL NOT play on standard US DVD players. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. Format: WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: 3-DVD Set, Biographies, Box Set, Interactive Menu, Scene Access.

SYNOPSIS:

Carambole

Carambole is the story of a doctor, in love and happy, who one rainy night accidentally hits a young boy with his car and drives away when he sees the boy is dead. Some days later he receives a letter telling him that someone knows what he did, and want money for his silence. And after that it just gets messier for the good doctor…

Munster’s Case

When the body of a wealthy wine merchant washes up on a beach with multiple stab wounds, police fear a media frenzy. But the quick arrest of the man’s former partner in the face of damning evidence promises a quick resolution to the case. Münster is unconvinced and angers his superiors when he follows up leads that hint at a dark secret in the dead man’s family. Removed from the investigation, Münster teams up with Van Veeteren in a deadly race to solve the case that nearly costs him his life.

Borkmann’s Point

Van Veeteren finds retiring from the police force is easier said than done when two decapitated bodies are found in quick succession. The matching MO in the two grisly murders brings the investigation teams of Maardam and Kaalbringen together – a collaboration that is not without its problems, especially when those in charge of the case seem a little too eager to make an arrest. In solving the case, Van Veeteren learns that it is not always easy to distinguish friend from foe.

Links: Van Veeteren Collection 1 at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon DE.

Van Veeteren Collection 2: 3 DVD Set

These are TV-movies based on Hakan Nesser’s Van Veeteren series. They are based on the following crime fiction novels: Case G, The Swallow, The Cat, The Rose and Death, and Moreno and the Silence. These crime fiction novels have not yet been translated into English.

• Actors: Chatarina Larsson, Dag Malmberg, Eva Rexed, Frida Westerdahl, Josef Säterhagen
• Directors: Daniel Lind Lagerlöf, Erik Leijonborg, Rickard Petrelius
• Format: Import, PAL, Box set, Widescreen
• Subtitles: English, Swedish, Danish, Finnish
• Region: Region 2 (Read more about DVD formats.)
• Number of discs: 3
• Studio: SF(Fox)
• Run Time: 264 minutes

Sweden released, PAL/Region 2 DVD. This DVD WILL NOT play on standard US DVD players. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: 3-DVD Set, Biographies, Box Set, Interactive Menu, Scene Access.

SYNOPSIS

Case G

Van Veeteren’s only unsolved case comes back to haunt him when the daughter of a murdered private detective comes to see him. A brutal wife killer who went into hiding years before has resurfaced under an assumed name, or so it seems, and Van Veeteren has personal reasons for wanting him caught. Always one step ahead of his friends on the police force, Van Veeteren has to face the killer alone in a final twist that surprises even this master detective.

The Swallow, The Cat, The Rose and Death

Münster comes across the strangled body of a young woman in her home and surprises the murderer who is still on the premises. Though the murderer escapes, a rare book is found at the scene with a dedication by the killer. When another victim is uncovered, Van Veeteren’s literary expertise is put to the test as it becomes clear they are dealing with a serial murderer who kills using names taken from 19th century crime novels. Which name will he use for his next victim?

Moreno and the Silence

When a girl is murdered soon after leaving a closed religious community, Moreno faces a difficult investigation as the community closes ranks and refuses to cooperate. When another girl is abducted and her bloody fingernails mailed to the police, tongues begin to loosen. But time is running out as the disturbed killer prepares to carry out another ritual murder – will Moreno be able to crack the case in time?

Links: Van Veeteren Collection 2 at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon DE: VAN VEETEREN-COLLECTION 2

Wall Street Journal has reviewed Woman with Birthmark. The review concludes that

Mr. Nesser works hard to sustain the somber undertones of “Woman With Birthmark,” which moves along smoothly in Laurie Thompson’s translation. But he is also careful to maintain plenty of suspense and to keep the tension boiling. The reader is privy to at least a dozen points of view as the story unfolds. One of the characters we encounter is the murderer: “In a different life, I could have become a poet. . . . I had the ability inside me, but never had the opportunity.” Mr. Nesser has seized his chance to create his own dark poetry from these stark materials, and the effect is haunting.

See also: Woman With Birthmark reviewed in Richmond Times-Dispatch, Times,

The Mind’s Eye is the first in the Inspector Van Veeteren mystery series.

When Eva Mitter is found drowned in her bathtub, the chief suspect quickly becomes her husband of three months, Janek. With no other viable suspects and Janek’s suspicious behaviour, it looks like and open and shut case. Certainly Inspector Van Veeteren thinks so. After all who could believe Janek’s convenient loss of memory as to what happened that fateful night because he drank too much at dinner?

But when a second murder occurs that is clearly connected to the first, something about Janek’s protestations sets Van Veeteren rethinking the entire case, and before long finds himself involved in one of the darkest cases of his career.

The characters in The Mind’s Eye are interesting. Chief Inspector Van Veeteren has a rather unsettled personal life and an obsession with beating his long-suffering colleague, Inspector Munster, at badminton. Van Veeteren is a man of depth and character, philosophical, with a dry wit, classical tastes, a perceptive eye and a strong moral compass. Rough and grumpy at times, warm at others. There are glimpses into his personal life in this book – his troubled son, and an estranged and confused relationship with his wife. The introspective Van Veeteren has grown cynical over the years, and now he longs for retirement.

Good, smart deduction leads Van Veeteren to suspect that the culprit is one of Mitter’s high school coworkers. Officers spend days questioning potential witnesses and suspects. They try to use logic to narrow the field, but some of their assumptions eliminate too many people.Van Veeteren understands that most of what they do is an utter waste of time. But he needs information so that he can connect the dots. As he tells one of his colleagues, “If there’s anything I’ve learned in this job, it’s that there are more connections in the world than there are particles in the universe…The hard bit is finding the right ones.”

The Mind’s Eye is interesting, entertaining, excellently written and has an intelligent plot, good characters, and plenty of surprises and twists. A good start for a great series!

Links:
Amazon US: Mind’s Eye: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery (Inspector Van Veeteren Mysteries)
Amazon UK: The Mind’s Eye
Amazon CAN: Minds Eye

Synopsis

Chief Inspector Van Veeteren knew that murder cases were never as open-and-shut as this one: Janek Mitter woke one morning with a brutal hangover and discovered his wife of three months lying facedown in the bathtub, dead. With only the flimsiest excuse as his defense, he is found guilty of a drunken crime of passion and imprisoned in a mental institution.

But Van Veeteren’s suspicions about the identity of the killer are borne out when Mitter also becomes a murder victim. Now the chief inspector launches a full-scale investigation of the two slayings. But it may only be the unspoken secrets of the dead–revealed in a mysterious letter that Mitter wrote shortly before his death–that will finally allow Van Veeteren to unmask the killer and expose the shocking root of this sordid violence.

Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is called away from vacation to help out in distant Kaalbringen.  He is asked to assist in solving the murders of an ex-con and a wealthy real-estate mogul, both of whom have been murdered with an ax. Being a bit bored and restless, Van Veeteren readily agrees, happily applying his knowledge and experience to tracking the killer down.

Relying on intuition and charm, the inspector slowly ingratiates himself with the residents of the insular community and bumbles toward a solution, much in the manner of Fred Vargas’ Commissaire Adamsberg.

Borkmann’s Point is a well-written, thoughtful novel. Borkmann’s Point is focused on the process of police work, the art and arduousness of investigation and detection, and is a imaginative police procedural with unusually deep, totally believable examinations of the human condition and of the crimes.  The very title of the book is in itself a clue for both Van Veeteren and the reader as to the process of crime-solving. It is a fascinating point and one that should intrigue many readers. It is a masterful detective story!

Links:
Amazon US: Borkmann’s Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery
Amazon UK: Borkmann’s Point
Amazon CAN: Borkmann’s Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery

Synopsis:

International bestseller Nesser makes his U.S. debut with this classy and rewarding whodunit, which won the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Prize for Best Novel in 1994.

Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, a veteran of 30 years of police work who appreciates fine food and drink, reluctantly cuts short his vacation to help the police chief of the remote town of Kaalbringen and his small crew investigate two ax murders. When the killer claims a third victim and the town’s best police investigator disappears without a trace, Van Veeteren, who has left only one case unsolved in his long career, intensifies his hunt. The contemplative inspector believes that in every case a point is reached where enough information has been gathered to solve the crime with “nothing more than some decent thinking.” The trick is knowing when that point is reached.

Thompson’s smooth translation makes this worthy mystery readily accessible to American readers.

Praise for Borkmann’s Point:

“Nesser had a penetrating eye for the skull beneath the skin.”
–The New York Times

“Keeps you on the edge of your seat… You don’t want it to end.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“Inspector Van Veeteren seems destined for a place amongst the great European detectives.”
–Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse mysteries

Nesser’s latest contemporary police procedural, set in his Swedish homeland, is an excellent puzzler that will remind many of the Inspector Morse series. Nesser’s sleuth, Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, is on the eve of major surgery when a baffling murder case is dumped on his team; a mutilated corpse has been found in a ditch, and is eventually identified as that of Leopold Verhaven, a recently released double murderer. … Van Veeteren and his squad deftly delve through decades of faded eyewitness recollections before reaching a satisfying solution, albeit one that requires the inspector to cross a line to achieve justice.

Review:

The Return is a Van Veeteren crime novel, and the sequel to Borkmann’s Point. It was written in 1995 but only translated in 2007. This time Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is back on home territory.

However, Van Veeteren is ill and does does most of his work from his hospital bed after a colon cancer operation, and uses his colleagues to do the leg work, primarily his colleague Munster.

The mystery in this book is who killed double murderer Leopold Verhaven? The murderer Verhaven had served two separate stretches of twelve years for the murder of two young women. Verhaven was a loner who was once a record-breaking middle distance runner, but was caught cheating and stripped of his medals. He then lived a reclusive life in a cottage in the woods, but was first convicted of murdering a woman he lived with. He returns home from his second prison term carrying a letter that seemingly has given him a mission. However, some months after his release his decapitated body is found by some school children. Studying the trial transcripts and press cuttings Van Veeteren concludes that the evidence against Verhaven was thin and circumstantial. Was Verhaven innocent? Is it the real killer that has struck again?

This is a wonderful whodunit. Van Veeteren is perhaps even more amusingly grumpy than usual. As well, in The Return we learn more about his family life. And, overall, this is a well-written crime fiction with a lot of Hakan Nesser’s dry humor. And the ending of the book is both unexpected and shocking. The Return is a superb piece of detective fiction. The layers of plot are carefully laid one on the other. The Return is a book that may haunt you after you have finished it.

Links:

Amazon US: The Return: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery
Amazon UK: The Return
Amazon CAN: The Return: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery
Amazon DE: Das falsche Urteil

Praise:

“A blast… His plots are addictive, his writing admirably economical, his characters complex and engaging.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Another solid example of why Swedes have become the talk of crime fiction.”
—Booklist

Håkan Nesser was born and grew up in Kumla, and has lived most of his adult life in Uppsala. He is a secondary level teacher. His first novel was published in 1988, but he worked as a teacher until 1998 when he became a full-time author, after having become extremely successful as a heavyweight crime writer with his Van Veeteren series. In August, 2006, Håkan Nesser and his wife Elke moved to Greenwich Village in New York. A few years later the couple packed their bags and moved to London.

Hakan Nesser has published 20 books in Swedish. Five of them have so far been translated to English. They are Borkmann’s Point (2006), The Return (2007), The Mind’s Eye (2008), Woman with Birthmark (2009), and The Inspector and Silence (2010). All of these are books in the series about Van Veeteren. The series about Van Veeteren consists of 10 books (in Swedish), just like Sjöwall & Wahlöö’s famous series about Martin Beck did.

A recurring main character is Inspector Van Veeteren, a detective in the early novels and later the owner of an antique books shop. These books play out in a fictitious city called Maardam, said to be located in northern Europe in a country which is never named but resembles Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland and Germany. The names however are mostly Dutch.

With his 2006 crime novel Människa utan hund (Human without Dog) Nesser introduced a new main character, Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti, a Swedish police inspector of Italian descent. He has remained the main ”hero” in Nesser’s crime books since then. Barbarotti is a more upbeat character then Van Veeteren and the books are firmly set in Sweden, although the town of Kymlinge is fictitious.

• 1988 – Koreografen
• 1993 – Det grovmaskiga nätet – English translation: The Mind’s Eye, 2008
• 1994 – Borkmanns punkt – English translation: Borkmann’s Point, 2006
• 1995 – Återkomsten – English translation: The Return, 2007
• 1996 – Barins triangel
• 1996 – Kvinna med födelsemärke – English translation: Woman with Birthmark, 2009
• 1997 – Kommissarien och tystnaden – English translation: The Inspector and Silence, 2010
  
• 1998 – Kim Novak badade aldrig i Genesarets sjö
• 1998 – Münsters fall
• 1999 – Carambole
• 1999 – Flugan och evigheten
• 2000 – Ewa Morenos fall
• 2001 – Svalan, katten, rosen, döden
• 2002 – Och Piccadilly Circus ligger inte i Kumla
• 2002 – Kära Agnes
• 2003 – Fallet G
• 2004 – Skuggorna och regnet
• 2006 – Människa utan hund (Inspector Barbarotti)
• 2007 – En helt annan historia (Inspector Barbarotti)
• 2008 – Berättelse om herr Roos (Inspector Barbarotti)
• 2009 – Maskarna på Carmine Street, novel
• 2010 – De ensamma, kriminalroman (Inspector Barbarotti)
• 2010 – Hur jag tillbringar mina dagar och mina nätter, novel

TV-movies (in Swedish)

• Van Veeteren series
  • Det grovmaskiga nätet (2000, TV)
  • Återkomsten (2001)
  • Kvinna med födelsemärke (2001, TV)
  • Münsters fall (2005)
  • Carambole (2005)
  • Borkmanns punkt (2005)
  • Moreno och tystnaden (2006)
  • Svalan, katten, rosen, döden (2006)
  • Fallet G (2006)