The Return: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

Well-written mystery novel. Nesser keeps you totally absorbed and in suspense most of the way through.

good. but needs more. good enough for me to now want to check out hakan's other work.

This is the second Van Veeteren I've read, and, like the first, it does not feature deduction, but rather intuition. As such I have to disqualify it as a normal mystery, which I think requires procedural content. Hence the low rating, because I read it expecting a traditional mystery. Plot concerns a twice-convicted murderer who in turn is murdered the day of his second release, and...more

This is the second Van Veeteren I've read, and, like the first, it does not feature deduction, but rather intuition. As such I have to disqualify it as a normal mystery, which I think requires procedural content. Hence the low rating, because I read it expecting a traditional mystery. Plot concerns a twice-convicted murderer who in turn is murdered the day of his second release, and found 8 months later with no hands or feet. Or head. START SPOILER: Besides lacking deduction, also unresolved is why the innocent accused murderer doesn't defend himself. Twice. And why would the real murderer be threatened by his release, given that he hasn't squealed for 24 years? Very unsatisfactory. :END SPOILER The writing still has a lot to offer, with more than its share of that Scandinavian grimness, with the detective resorting to taking the law into his own hands. Excerpts: --"Excuse me? Who's that speaking?" she asked. --"Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, of course. I have cancer of the large intestine, and I'm going to let this Dr. Moewenroedhe cut it out, and..." --"One moment." He waited. She picked the phone up again. "May 5th, that's right....Have you any questions?" Will it hurt? he thought. Will I survive? What percentage never come around from the anesthetic? --"No," he said. --"I'll get back to you if I change my mind." He could hear the surprise in her silence. --"Why should you change your mind?" --"I might be busy with something else. You never know." She hesitated. --"Are you worried about the operation, Mr. Van Veeteren?" --"Worried? Me?" He tried to laugh, but even he could hear that it sounded more like a dying dog. He had some experience with dying dogs. --"As I said," he went on, "it's an unusually unsavory body." Unsavory? Münster thought, and recalled how Meusse had once told him how his life had been changed and made more miserable by his less-than-uplifting profession [coroner]. How he had been impotent by the age of thirty, how his wife had left him when he was thirty-five, how he'd turned vegetarian at forty, and how he'd more or less stopped eating solid food by the time he was fifty....His own body and its functions had become more and more repulsive as the years went by. Something he could only feel disgust and aversion for, he had confessed to Münster and Van Veeteren one afternoon when, for whatever reason, the drinks had become more numerous than usual.    hide

Good police/psychological mystery - translated with lots of cliches though...I wonder what they were in Swedish?

Not quite as good as Borkmann's Point but still pretty good.

Eh. Not the best mystery I've ever read, but not the worst. Insp. Van Veerten is no Morse, that's for sure.