Review: THE MIND'S EYE, Hakan Nesser

• copyright 1993. #1 in the Van Veeteren series
• published by Macmillan 2008
• translated from Swedish into English by Laurie Thompson
• my edition - Large Print by ISIS Publishing 2009
• ISBN 978-0-7531-8376-2
• 316 pages
• Source: my local library

Synopsis (author's website)

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.

My Take

The author's website is worth consulting for an overview of the series, of which THE MIND'S EYE is the first.

The series, most often referred to as the Van Veeteren series, takes place in Maardam, a fictitious city in a made-up country that could be anywhere in northern Europe. It follows the murder cases investigated by Chief Inspector Van Veeteren – eventually the retired Chief Inspector – and his two crime squad protégés, Münster and Moreno.

more

The author goes on to describe Inspector Van Veteeren as a "a philosophical detective with a unique ability to draw lines between dots that are far apart and nearly invisible."
Certainly in THE MIND'S EYE there are some fascinating descriptions of the Inspector listening to classical music and finding that the elements of the case click into place. 

Van Veeteren's offsider Munster reflects

The murderer was somewhere out there. One of this town's 300,000 inhabitants had taken it upon himself to kill one of his fellow human beings, and it was the duty of him, and Van Veeteren and all the rest of them, to nail the man - or the woman. It was going to be one hell of a job in fact. They would work for thousands of hours before the case was closed, and when they eventually had all the answers, it would become clear to them that nearly everything they had done had been a complete waste of time. They would realize that if only they'd done this or that right away, they would have cracked it in two days instead of two months.

There are many things to like about THE MIND'S EYE: if you are new to the series, you'll have the pleasure of starting with the first in the series; you'll also have the pleasure of getting acquainted with a very likeable detective. He's not young - someone rings the station and asks to be put through to the "grey one". I like the fact that he can admit he has made a mistake.

Van Veeteren is empathetic to the victims of crime - he's been where they are now: broken marriage, fragile childhood. There are some truly comic incidents too: imagine him lying on the floor having his back massaged by someone he went to interview. 
In these days of over long books, THE MIND'S EYE is a quick read.

I have a couple of the other titles on my shelves. Must read them!

My rating: 4.6

Other sites to check

• EuroCrime - review by Karen Meek
• In the Spotlight - Hakan Nesser - The Mind'sEye - Confessions of a Mystery Novelist
• International Noir Fiction
• Reactions to Reading

Also reviewed in MiP: WOMAN WITH BIRTHMARK

The Van Veeteren series

1. The Mind's Eye (2008)
2. Borkmann's Point (2006)
3. The Return (2007)
4. Woman with Birthmark (2009)
5. The Inspector and Silence (2010)
6. The Unlucky Lottery (2011)
7. Hour of the Wolf (2012) 

Review: WOMAN WITH BIRTHMARK, Hakan Nesser

An Inspector Van Veeteren mystery.
First published in Sweden 1996
Pirst published in English 2009 by Pantheon books.
Translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson.
This edition PanMacmillan, 2009, ISBN 978-0-230-73697-9, 327 pages

A pre-Christmas funeral, a solitary mourner, a dead woman whose whole life had been littered with defeats and messy failures, a death bed promise to exact revenge. Just over three weeks later the murders begin.
When the first victim's wife comes home from the theatre near midnight she finds her husband dead just inside the door, shot twice in the chest, twice under the belt.

There are few clues for the police to work on. None of the neighbours noticed anything, there seems to have been no motive, the killer simply shot Malik when he opened the front door, then closed the door and walked away.

Solving this case, amid a rising death toll, takes Inspector Van Veeteren and his team the best part of two months. The tension rises as the reader identifies the next victims, and the race is on to see who gets to them first: the police or the killer.

Although this is the 4th of the Van Veeteren series, it is the first I have read. Van Veeteren is an interesting character, insisting on methodical techniques among his colleagues and subordinates, but more inclined to intuitive leaps himself. He insists in the end that i's are dotted and t's are crossed. This quotation sums up the sort of job he does: ".. we must continue playing our roles to the very end."

The series take place in Maardam, a fictitious city in a made-up country that could be anywhere in northern Europe. Nesser's website says "Van Veeteren is a philosophical detective with a unique ability to draw lines between dots that are far apart and nearly invisible. He firmly believes that he is able to solve any murder case. He is somewhat enigmatic and at times difficult to deal with. Vaguely gruff, temperamental, a little eccentric, but overall very warm, and funny, and someone it’s easy to identify with."

I found WOMAN WITH BIRTHMARK a relatively easy but satisfying read, and I'll certainly be looking for another.

My rating: 4.5

But read them in order if you can - I just have the hunch that will pay dividends.
The books have been translated out of order but try to locate them in the order in which they were written:

1. MIND'S EYE (trans. 2008), published 1993
2. BORKMANN'S POINT (trans. 2006) - won the 'best novel' award from the Swedish Crime Writers' Academy in 1994.
3. THE RETURN (trans 2007)
4. WOMAN WITH BIRTHMARK (trans 2009), published 1996.
   

Hakan Nesser (Håkan in Swedish, born February 21, 1950) is a Swedish author and teacher who has written a number of successful novels, mostly crime fiction. He has won Best Swedish Crime Novel Award three times, and his novel Carambole won the Glass Key award in 2000. His books have been translated from Swedish into 9 languages. Hakan Nesser has published 20 books in Swedish. Four of them have so far been translated to English. The Van Veeteren series actually consists of 10 books, so let's hope the translations keep happening.

Sites to check:

• Hakan Nesser's own website
• Reviews on Euro Crime
• Review on International Noir Fiction
• Review on Crime Scraps