Inspector Van Veeteren
7 primary works
Book 1
A Swedish crime writer as thrilling as Mankell, a detective as compelling as Wallander . . .
The Mind's Eye by Håkan Nesser is the first novel in the stunning Van Veeteren series.
Janek Mitter stumbles into his bathroom one morning after a night of heavy drinking, to find his beautiful young wife, Eva, floating dead in the bath. She has been brutally murdered. Yet even during his trial Mitter cannot summon a single memory of attacking Eva, nor a clue as to who could have killed her if he had not. Only once he has been convicted and locked away in an asylum for the criminally insane does he have a snatch of insight – but is it too late?
Drawing a blank after exhaustive interviews, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren remains convinced that something, or someone, in the dead woman's life has caused these tragic events. But the reasons for her speedy remarriage have died with her. And as he delves even deeper, Van Veeteren realizes that the past never stops haunting the present . . .
The Mind's Eye is followed by the tensely gripping Borkmann's Point.
Book 2
Borkmann's rule was hardly a rule; in fact, it was more of a comment, a landmark for tricky cases . . .
In every investigation, he maintained, there comes a point beyond which we don't really need any more information. When we reach that point, we already know enough to solve the case by means of nothing more than some decent thinking. In his memoirs, Borkmann went so far as to claim that it was precisely this ability, or the lack of it, which distinguishes a good detective from a bad one.
A wealthy real-estate mogul is brutally murdered with an axe in the quiet coastal town of Kaalbringen, apparently the second victim of a serial killer. Chief Inspector van Veeteren, bored of his holiday nearby, is summoned to assist the local authorities. But as the investigation proceeds there seems to be nothing to link the mogul with the first victim, a seedy ex-con.
Another body is discovered, again with no apparent connection to the others, and the pressure mounts. The local police chief, just days away from retirement, is determined to wrap things up before he goes. Then there's a fourth murder, and a brilliant young female detective goes missing - perhaps she has reached Borkmann's Point before anyone else . . .
This riveting novel, full of fascinating, quirky characters and vivid settings, introduces the chess-playing Inspector van Veeteren - a detective already beloved by his European readership - and marks the UK debut of Hakan Nesser, a chilling new voice in crime fiction.
'On this showing, Inspector Van Veeteren seems destined for a place amongst the great European detectives' Colin Dexter, creator of Inspector Morse
Book 3
International Bestseller
Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is forced to unlock the secrets of a nearly perfect murder in this taut psychological thriller.
On a rainy April day, a body—or what is left of it—is found by a young girl. Wrapped in a blanket with no hands, feet, or head, it signals the work of a brutal, methodical killer. The victim, Leopold Verhaven, was a track star before he was convicted for killing two of his ex-lovers. He consistently proclaimed his innocence, however, and was killed on the day of his return to society. This latest murder is more than a little perplexing and Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is determined to discover the truth, even if it means taking the law into his own hands.
Book 4
A Swedish crime writer as thrilling as Mankell, a detective as compelling as Wallander . . .
Woman with Birthmark by Håkan Nesser is the fourth title in his atmospheric Van Veeteren series.
A young woman shivers in the December cold as her mother's body is laid to rest in a cemetery. The only thing that warms her is the thought of the revenge she will soon take . . .
Then a middle-aged man is killed at his home, shot twice in the chest and twice below the belt. He had recently received a series of bizarre phone calls where an old song is played down the line – evoking an eerie sense of both familiarity and unease. Before the police can find the culprit, a second man is killed in the same way.
Chief Inspector Van Veeteren and his team must dig far back into each man's past – but with few clues at each crime scene, can they find the killer before anyone else dies?
Woman with Birthmark is followed by the fifth book in the series, The Inspector and Silence.
Book 5
In the heart of summer, the country swelters in a fug of heat. In the beautiful forested lake-town of Sorbinowo, Sergeant Merwin Kluuge's tranquil existence is shattered when he receives a phone-call from an anonymous woman. She tells him that a girl has gone missing from the summer camp of the mysterious The Pure Life, a religious sect buried deep in the woods. Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is recruited to help solve the mystery.
But Van Veeteren's investigations at The Pure Life go nowhere fast. The strange priest-like figure who leads the sect -Oscar Yellineck- refuses even to admit anyone is missing. Things soon take a sinister turn, however, when a young girl's body is discovered in the woods, raped and strangled; and Yellineck himself disappears. Yet even in the face of these new horrors, the remaining members of the sect refuse to co-operate with Van Veeteren, remaining largely silent.
As the body count rises, a media frenzy descends upon the town and the pressure to find the monster behind the murders weighs heavily on the investigative team. Finally Van Veeteren realises that to solve this disturbing case, faced with silence and with few clues to follow, he has only his intuition to rely on. . .
Book 6
The final day of Waldemar Leverkuhn’s life begins auspiciously: With three friends, he wins a modest sum in the lottery. But it ends, after a celebratory dinner, with him belligerent, drunk, and stumbling home to his bed, where he is brutally stabbed to death with a carving knife. The case seems to be going nowhere, until the reserved, weary widow confesses to the killing. When the Leverkuhns’ formidable neighbor goes missing, and then turns up gruesomely murdered, Münster and his team find a few, wispy clues that suggest her death is connected to Leverkuhn’s—clues that lead to a dark and terrible secret.
Book 7
A Swedish crime writer as thrilling as Mankell, a detective as compelling as Wallander . . .
Van Veeteren faces a chilling case in Håkan Nesser's Hour of the Wolf, the seventh book to feature Chief Inspector Van Veeteren.
In the dead of night, in the pouring rain, a drunk driver smashes his car into a young man. He abandons the body at the side of the road, but the incident will set in motion a chain of events which will change his life forever.
Soon Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, now retired from the Maardam police force, will face his greatest trial yet as someone close to him is, inexplicably, murdered.
Van Veeteren's former colleagues, desperate for answers, struggle to decipher the clues to this appalling crime. But when another body is discovered, it gradually becomes clear that this killer is acting on their own terrifying logic . . .
Hour of the Wolf is followed by book eight in the series, The Weeping Girl.