The Grumpy Chief Inspector Thinks His Way Through

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	• Borkmann's Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery Hakan Nesser Vintage, 2007 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Another First Rate Crime Writer From Sweden

I am not sure what is it about Sweden that produces such great writers of crime fiction. Perhaps it is the cold dark winters that are conducive to writing or the influence of classical music. Hakan Nesser's first mystery to be published in English joins those of that other wonderful Swedish writer Henning Mankell as first class novels. Nesser's protagonist is Inspector Van Veeteren, a crusty police officer who like Mankell's inspector listens to classical music and works methodically to solve crimes, as do most police officers. He also plays chess, is recently divorced, has the vice of smoking but loves fine wines.

An ax murderer is shaking up the citizens of Kaalbringen as one, two, then three victims are found with apparently nothing in common but that they are all killed in the same, cold-blooded way. The plot moves along gingerly; the ending is not to be believed.

The title (this doesn't spoil the novel) refers to an older police officer named Borkmann whom Van Veeteren knew when he was just beginning his law enforcement career, "one of the few police officers he'd come across for whom he had nothing but respect and admiration." Borkmann's rule was that "in every investigation. . . there comes a point beyond which we don't really need more information. When we reach that point, we already know enough to solve the case by means of nothing more than some decent thinking." When Van Veeteren reaches that point, he sets about to solve the murders.

BORKMANN'S POINT is a welcome addition to the current crop of crime fiction published in English.

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Engrossing Scandinavian crime thriller

Hakan Nesser, an esteemed Swedish crime drama novelist has followed in the footsteps of Henning Mankell, having his novels translated for consumption in the English speaking market. "Borkmann's Point" written in 1994 hopefully will begin a trend of introducing more of Nesser's work.

His protagonist, veteran Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is tiring of his holiday spent seaside in some presumably but unnamed Scandinavian town and anxious to get back into the fray. He receives a phone call from his superior, chief of police Hiller directing him to proceed to another nearby seaside town of Kaalbringen. A brutal hacking murder committed with an ax had just been discovered there.

When Van Veeteren arrives he meets with local police chief Bausen and his team. Bausen fills him in telling him that the murder of affluent and promiscuous real estate man Ernst Simmel whose head was nearly detatched from his body, was actually the second crime apparently committed with an ax. Chief Bausen affords Van Veeteren the opportunity to head the investigation lavishing upon him the hospitality of his friendship and his home.

The case however drags on and a third similar murder of a young doctor occurs in Kaalbringen. By now there is a panic setting in among the local inhabitants. Van Veetern calls in an Inspector Muller from his own team who assists proficient local Inspector Beate Moerk in the inquest. With the inability to find a connection among the victims the case begins to grow cold. Just as it seems that a breakthrough is imminent Inspector Moerk goes missing adding to the perplexing case.

In painstaking fashion Van Veeteren keeps on snooping around until the surprising identity of the killer and his motives are revealed.

Nesser whose writing talent is quite apparent in his plot construction, falls short in the area of character development. I really never was able to appreciate the mechanics of the thought processes of his characters as they had little depth. Even Van Veeteren, presumably developed more completely in previous works, was still a stranger to me even as the novel concluded.

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A character rich award winning novel

In Kaalbringen, a quaint seaside town in Sweden, the population lives in fear. Two men have been killed by an ax murderer. One is an ex-con while the other is a wealthy businessman. The relentless detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is assigned to the case. The stakes get higher when another body is found. Can Van Veeteren and the local police solve the crimes before more lives are lost?
Hakan Nesser is a well known crime fiction writer in Europe. He has written a series of bestselling novels starring Inspector Van Veeteren. BORKMANN'S POINT is the first to be translated into English. The major strength of this work is the character of Van Veeteren. He is a likable detective, highly competent at what he does. The minor characters are also solid creations. This mystery is so character-driven that despite of the somewhat simple solution, the book as a whole works remarkably well. The setting of the seaside village is also described with great care. BORKMANN'S POINT won the best novel award for the Swedish Crime Writers' Academy in 1994. It is easy to see why.

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Yummy as a Swedish Fish

Nesser is a fine storyteller with a well-sketched hero named DCI Van Veeteren. This is story of serial murder, and the method is quite brutal--a sweeping blow from an ax to the back of the neck. No one has any idea who, in the small Swedish city of Kaalbringen, would do such a thing or why.

Van Veeteren is a lonely bugger whose wife has died (or left him, I can't remember which). He broods when he's alone and seems quite introspective even in company, although he has a quirky and laid back sense of humor. He enjoys good music, as his car stereo (but not his car) is quite luxurious. Who doesn't like a detective who listens to Sibelius while on a major manhunt? A suspect who looks forward to a warm fire on a cold night, listening to a Heyman quintet?

When you read a lot of police procedurals, as I do, you always appreciate a little thoughtfulness from your detective, as Van Veeteren muses on the autumn of his life:

"...did there come a point, he started to wonder, beyond which we no longer look forward to something coming, but only to getting away from what has passed? Getting away. Closing down and moving on, but not looking forward to starting again. Like a journey whose delights decrease in direct proportion to the distance traveled from the starting point, whose sweetness becomes more and more bitter as the goal comes closer."

Kurt Wallander would hang out with Van Veeteren, and that's enough for me. Laurie Thompson is a veteran translator who skillfully got Wallender to us in beautiful English, and he is in mid-season form with this material. Give Hakan Nesser a try--I know I'll read the next book I can get my hands on!

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The Grumpy Chief Inspector Thinks His Way Through

No one comments -- not in the reviews or on the cover of the Van Veeteren books in Swedish, in German translation or in English translation -- how odd it is that a Swedish writer is locating his sleuth and cases in mythical towns with Dutch names. In an interview published by www.schwedenkrimi.de (a site dedicated to detective fiction published in Swedish), Nesser says,

"But a book is really nothing more than a conversation between two persons, the author and the reader. When I read, I create my own imaginary picture of what happens. Images appear in my head and that way, I work actively with the novel. When i write that 'it was a cold and rainy November evening in Maardam,' the reader fashions images for himself. If I write the same thing about Paris, another image appears, but it's an image that exists already in reality, that I quickly evoke. But when I write about a fictional country, the reader is much more involved and makes up his own Maardam. And nobody can claim that his picture of it is false."

Commissioner Van Veeteren is a grump slowing approaching retirement age, eventually intuiting the solutions to his cases and generally intimidating his team of earnest young detectives. I read this one first in German and now in the English version. It is the first, one supposes, of the series to be fed to the U.S. public if successful.

As in other novels in the series Van Veeteren would really rather be on holiday than working. Here the divorced police official has spent several weeks in a holiday area (also fictional), some of that time in disappointing communion with his grown son Eric, an ex-convict. He gets a call from his chief with the request to look in on the nearby (also fictional) small city of Kaalbringen, where an unknown assassin is chopping heads most of the way off.

Van Veeteren finds, as usual, a sympathetic ageing colleague with whom to smoke cigarillos, drink wine, and play chess -- in this case the police chief, who is only two weeks from retirement. He listens as a team of relatively young investigators gather and report information about the two apparently unrelated murders (to which another is added, with the murder weapon left behind.) We witness their interviews with victims, neighbors, and family members. Van Veeteren's foil from his home station, detective Muenster, is pulled away from comfortable family life to participate in the bleak case and as the days pass, Muenster establishes a friendship with the 31-year-old unmarried detective Beate Moerke, platonic but nevertheless vivid enough to arouse guilt feelings. She disappears during an evening jog, almost certainly kidnapped by a murder who realizes that she is close to solving the case.

The reader meets the murderer in the course of the story, both in anonymous third person and as someone appearing in the narrative. There's a gripping finale and rescue attempt, for which the author artfully conceals vital details to leave us guessing. The second time through, on page 300 in the English version, I found misdirection from Nesser that went beyond guile into a deliberate trick upon the reader.

And in the end, there is Van Veeteren, successful in detection but still the grumbling older outsider, really looking forward to the day when he can give up this profession and spend his savings to take over a quiet antiquities shop in central Maardam. A tired, familiar figure, countering evil but reluctantly understanding it at the same. I hope that Pantheon and Random House succeed in bringing the full series into English for our entertainment.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4

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