Review
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 
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.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I discovered this writer while brousing in a used bookstore. I am enrolled in an English class on Popular Crime….I have to give report and I plan to do it on this writer! I like it because he has such a clean writing style. Some detective fiction is so complicated!
Just finished Mind’s Eye and enjoyed it very much. Looking forward to the next book. BUT I must admit – I didn’t get the last page (Ch 45). Who is Ingrun and who is the woman?
I can answer your question Faye. It is a superb ending. If you remember, Mitter was staying and was eventually murdered at Majorna Hospital. During his stay there, he suddenly remembers the the identity of Eva’s killer. He then writes the name down in the Bible…somewhere near the Book of Mark. In fact, he writes it in the Book of Luke.
At the end of the story, a patient finds the name written down in the Bible. The patient then tells, Ingrun, a male nurse at the hospital, about what she found. Of course the patient has no idea of who Carl Ferger is or what atrocities he’s committed. But she is very upset because she feels that someone has desecrated the Bible.
The irony is that the identity of Mitter’s killer was just waiting to be found
by the police; but alas they, the police, never checked the Bible. It could have saved them a lot of trouble and even Elizabeth Hennan’s life had they discovered it earlier. Did Chief Inspector Van Veeteren miss or overlook something here? Maybe.
No one’s perfect!
Rob
I have just finished reading The Mind’s Eye with my class. We loved it. The characters, the subtle turns in the story, everything in fact. The psycholigical depth. But, we have one question. We would like to know how Van Veeteren knew that Rolf Ringmar’s ( alias Carl Ferger) also mudered Ellen Caine in Toronto, Canada before Rolf confesses to it on pages 262- 266? On pages 240-241, he, Van Veeteren, has all the six names of Rolf”s victims – the sixth being Elizabeth Hennan. So, somewhere earlier in the book Van Veeteren had to have somehow linked Ellen Caine to Rolf. But where and how?
Thanks,
Rob
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