unputdownable -- a very compelling read

books:


	• Mind's Eye: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery (Inspector Van Veeteren Mysteries) Hakan Nesser Pantheon, 2008 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Another Chief Inspector to love!

This is the first in the Inspector Van Veeteren mystery series. It is an intricately plotted mystery with several murder victims, but it is impossible to say more without giving away a major plot development. So if you buy this book, don't read the description given on the inside cover flap.

Let me say only this. Chief Inspector Van Veeteren (or "VV" as his colleagues call him) is a character and quite the opposite of Mankell's introverted Kurt Wallender. Make no mistake, however, VV is a dedicated and brilliant chief inspector who has solved 20 of 21 cases. But his outspoken and blunt behavior around his colleagues and even around his boss, the chief of police, often had me laughing out loud. There is humor in this book, as when a suspect calls the police department with some information but can't remember the name of the Inspector (Van Veeteren) who questioned him. "You know," he says to the on-duty officer, "the unpleasant one, the really, really unpleasant one"--upon which the officer immediately puts him through to VV!

It is wonderful to watch Chief Inspector Van Veeteren connect all the dots in this intricately woven plot, and the subtle humor that runs throughout the book is an unexpected plus.

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unputdownable -- a very compelling read

The actual first installment in the Inspector Van Veeteren mystery novels, "Mind's Eye" is a treat waiting for anyone who hasn't discovered this excellent series yet. Two pieces of advice first: as the previous reviewer has already mentioned, leave off reading the plot synopsis on the dustjacket -- it gives away far too much of the plot. The second piece of advice: be prepared for a very different kind of police procedural. Hakan Nesser has taken the genre that the British so excel in (and which we are so familiar with) and managed to make it something intriguingly and uniquely his.

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 something about Janek's protestations sets Van Veetern rethinking the entire case, and before long finds himself involved in one of the darkest cases of his career...

This is the second Inspector Van Veeteren I've read ("The Return" being the other one); I've enjoyed both of them very much. Nesser's prose style, while economical and a little sparse at time, and his star detective, Van Veetern is a bit of a curmudgeon, impatient and condescending to boot, and seems to make connections in the case at hand that one doesn't always see and which he doesn't always share with his colleagues, but Neser's clever plotting and is brilliant character portrayals made "Mind's Eye" a very compelling and very engaging read. It was literally unputdownable and I simply had to read on until the very last page. A very good read indeed.

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The highly anticipated first novel in the Inspector Van Veeteren series in now available in English. At last, American readers will be able to enjoy, from its very beginnings, this addictive series by one of Europe?s most beloved and best-selling crime writers.

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.

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