Woman with Birthmark (1996)

I loved this book! The author is not as descriptive as Larsson or Nesbo, and therefore the book is not as long; but he keeps the story moving at a fast clip, and the characters are highly entertaining. This is a very unusual plot that I won't spoil, but it's definitely an unexpected ending. Now I want to read his other books! ( )

A woman,upon the death of her mother, makes a decision that it's time for some people to pay. What wrong was done to her and her mother is not made known at the beginning, but as the killings start to take place, the motive begins to emerge.

Inspector Van Veeteren, battling a cold, and a team flummoxed by an almost total absence of clues as to the identity of the killer and the motive for the killings, helplessly stand by the sidelines, hoping this is not the work of a serial killer. Gradually though, connections between the victims start to emerge and as the race to find the killer heats up, will Veeteren's team find the killer in time before she kills again, or will they be too late?

Blackmail, murder and a clever killer make for great ingredients in this police procedural. I thought it read a little slow at times, but there's no denying the building tension in the book. ( )

Another fine Scandinavian police procedural (no children were harmed in the course of this plot). Some mysteries start with nothing but the discovery of the crime, and dare the reader to solve the puzzle before the detectives; others let the reader ahead of the police, and the charm is seeing how the police work the puzzle out. This is one of the latter. The criminal is known immediately to the reader, even before the crime. The root cause is fairly easy to guess. But the police must start from the beginning, and watching them work it out is like cheering for the home team.

Inspector Van Veeteren is a classic: disillusioned, depressed in the long dark winters, alone yet surrounded by interesting and sometimes funny police characters, each with their special talents/drawbacks.

This is not the first in the series, although the first I've come across. I'll be looking for the first, and more if there are any. Quite enjoyable. ( )

A typical Scandinavian mystery - which is not a bad thing. But the setting of a fictional town with characteristics of German, Dutch, Slavic, and other places and languages, was sometimes annoying to me, and took away some of my reading pleasure. (I'm never happy to see my mother tongue maltreated and twisted, not even in this fictional place.) ( )

4th of 4 crime novels which have been translated. A young woman decides at her mother's funeral to avenge a wrong done to her mother. She has a list and she intends to kill everyone on it. The first man is found just inside his front door with 2 bullet wound in the chest, and 2 bullet wounds "down below." It's up to the police to figure out the killer before they (we know it's a she but they don't) strike again.

This crime novel is formatted like a psychological thriller, very much in the vein of Barbara Vine (isn't it Vine/Rendell that introduces you to the killer first?). It's all about finding stopping the killer before they kill again. There's a bit more character development in this one than in the previous two I read, but time is spent with both the potential victims and the killer herself, so there isn't much leftover for the police. And because Nesser has set his novels in a fictitious city in a country never named, he obviously does't want us to get too attached to that either. Everything it seems is in service to the thriller storyline, which is fine if you enjoy thrillers. I find that all that suspense in a crime novel just makes me impatient. I've read 3 of these now, and I find the Inspector Van Veeteren just meh. He can't stand up to Rebus, Dalziel, Wallender, Erlander or Winter, imo. ( )