Mind's Eye (1993)

In the first of the Van veeteren series, our inspector hunts a killer, who murdered a woman and after the husband has been convicted for it, he kills him too... The trails leads the inspector to the past filled with secrets..... ( )

Schoolteacher Janek Mitter wakes up with a hell of a hangover one morning and discovers the body of his wife in the bathtub. While it’s clear she has been murdered the question that neither police nor Mitter can answer is whether or not he was the one who killed her. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Mitter is tried, convicted and confined to an asylum for the mentally ill but the case is not yet finished and events cause the police to investigate further.

By reputation Scandinavians are cold and dour but, if their crime fiction is anything to go by, this is as untrue a stereotype as any other because this book really is very funny. Most of the humour comes with the dialogue between Inspector Van Veeteren and his police colleagues though Nesser even finds the funny in Mitter’s dreadful situation. Translator Laurie Thompson has once again done a great job of creating a very readable book which relies quite heavily on verbal jousting for its lighter moments.

Van Veeteren is a terrifically well-rounded character who gets depressed by the weather, plays badminton grudgingly and is, nineteen times out of twenty, very sure of his own ability to judge a person’s guilt or innocence by little more than the tilt of their head. His droll observations and quirks provide much of the humour in the book but he’s also intelligent and caring in a ‘blokey’ kind of way and I look forward to reading more of his adventures.

The book felt a little awkward at the outset with its court scenes at the beginning followed by a police investigation but turning the procedural upside down in this way worked well in the end. The uncovering of Mitter’s wife’s past is really done quite cleverly and offered a good deal of credible tension towards the climax of the book. I shall definitely be looking for book two in this series sooner rather than later. ( )

I enjoy the audio versions of these Scandanavian crime stories as the names and locations come to life without my struggling to imagine the pronunciations. I liked this sardonic chief inspector and will read more of the series. ( )

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.

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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! ( )

Janek Mattias Mitter, a high school teacher of history and philosophy, wakes up one morning so hung over he cannot remember his own name or where he is. As he, very slowly, moves through his apartment he begins to catch glimmers of memory. But not enough to prepare him for the sight that awaits when he jimmies open the locked bathroom door with a screwdriver. His wife of three months lies dead in the bathtub. And he can remember nothing of the night before.While in custody, he is questioned by Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren.

Van Veeteren is a melancholy Nordic detective, not quite as depressed as Kurt Wallander, or as ennui filled as Carl Morck, but just enough so that we know this novel takes place somewhere in Northern Europe where winter brings almost constant rain and overcast skies.In addition to the miserable early winter weather, Van Veeteren has other cause for depression: his wife, after an eight month separation (their fourth or fifth such separation), is making noises about returning to him. He seems chronically unable to beat his subordinate, Inspector Münster at badminton and injured his foot during their last game. His son is serving a two year sentence at the state prison for drug smuggling. His car stereo has a "gremlin" which interferes with his ability to enjoy a Vivaldi mandolin concerto.

And worse, he has custody of his adult daughter's ailing dog:"Ever since his daughter Jess’s twelfth birthday he had been saddled with the slow-witted Newfoundland bitch, but now all she did was to lie in front of the refrigerator, sicking up foul-smelling yellowish-green lumps, and he was forced to drive home several times a day in order to clean them up.The dog, that is. Not his daughter.

"He is a self-admittedly outstanding detective almost always able to determine a suspect's guilt:"Nine times out of ten, he was. Well, even more often, if the truth be told. Van Veeteren was generally able to decide if he was looking the culprit in the eye in nineteen cases out of twenty, if not more.No point in hiding his light under a bushel."

But in the case of the high school teacher he finds himself in the unusual position of experiencing actual doubt, even though the evidence points to Mitter's guilt. During the trial, Mitter stands by his claim of memory loss while insisting that he did not kill his wife, as in this exchange with the prosecuting attorney:

“You mean that you didn’t kill her because you didn’t kill her?”

Mitter allowed himself a couple of extra seconds’ thinking time before replying. Then he said, calm and restrained, “No, I know I didn’t kill her, because I didn’t kill her. Just as I’m sure that you know you are not wearing frilly knickers today, because you aren’t. Not today.”

There is something about his consistent claim of memory loss, combined perhaps with his ability to make the Inspector smile, that triggers a need in Van Veeteren to continue the investigation during the trial. But in spite of Van Veeteren's doubt and his continuing investigation, Mitter is convicted and sent to a state mental institution.At that point the detective and his team are assigned other cases and life continues for all involved.

Until one day, another death occurs and the investigation begins all over again.Van Veeteren is an easy character to like as he combines a certain gruffness of manner, a slightly egotistical attitude, and general world weariness with a penchant for the absurd.

Hakan Nesser claims that the novel is set in a mythical Northern European nation because he didn't fell familiar enough with the geography of Sweden to please his German readers. But Nesser is known for subtle humor as displayed with his naming minor characters after other writers; Mankel, Kellerman and Joensuu all appear. And the Van Veeteren name itself is derived from Janwillem van de Wetering, the Dutch author of the Grijpstra and De Gier stories.

Hakan Nesser has written nine more Van Veeteren novels, Mind's Eye being the first in the series and the third to be translated into English from the original Swedish by Laurie Thompson. The hardback was published by Pantheon Books (June 30, 2008) runs 288 pages and is available as are paperback and e-book editions at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Alibris, and iTunes.As usual, there is a lag between the original publication date and the date of translation.

Here is a list of those that have been or are in translation
1993 The Mind's Eye translated 20081994
Borkmann's Point translated 2006
1995 The Return translated 2007
1996 Woman with Birthmark translated 2009
1997 The Inspector and Silence, translated 2010
1998 The Unlucky Lottery, translated 2011
1999 Hour of the Wolf, translation 2012

Three more in this series await translation.

He has won the Best Swedish Crime Novel Award three times for his work, and the Glass Dagger Award in 2000 for a later book in the Van Veeteren series.Nesser has written another detective series, none of which have yet been translated into English, about Gunnar Barbarotti

:"...the new series, the neatly named Barbarotti Quartet. Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti's parents could agree on nothing except they wanted a divorce, which meant his Italian father and Swedish mother battled over his name and luckily mother won because the books are set in Sweden and he became Gunnar rather than Guisseppe Barbarotti.The Italian Swedish detective seems to be a captivating character who makes a bargain with God in which Barbarotti keeps score marking God's performance."

I really do need to learn Swedish! ( )