HÃ¥kan Nesser

This is the first in the Inspectory Van Veeteren Swedish crime series. It won the 1993 Swedish Crime Writers Academy Prize for new authors.

Janek awakens deeply hungover and unable to remember much from the night before to fin that his wife of a few months is dead in the bathtub. He calls the police and then proceeds to tidy up a bit. Not surprisingly he is arrested for the murder of his wife, convicted, and sent, at least initially, to a psychiatric hospital.

From the beginning Inspector Van Veeteren found aspects of the case puzzling and was not entirely sure Janek was the culprit. When Janek himself is murdered in the psychiatric hospital shortly after his conviction, the inspector must find Janek's murderer who presumably also murdered Janek's wife.

I was not particularly taken with this, and have like other Scandi-crime novels I've read better. This is one in which the detective puzzles things out mostly in his head and uses intuition rather than physical clues or evidence, so it sometimes felt to me like things were just pulled out of the blue.

However, I often find that the first in a crime series to be not very compelling, and have liked later entries more, so it's possible that I will read at least the second in the series.

2 1/2 stars… (more)

Maybe 2 1/2 stars... I don't like it when the detective discovers something that isn't shared with the reader. So when Inspector Van Veeteren comes across an important clue in the telephone book, I am frustrated by the author not telling me what he saw. Then he meets with an unnamed woman who was previously married to a pedophile - clearly the murderer but since we don't know who the woman is how can we figure out who that is?!

I also felt that it seemed like a lot of descriptive details went into describing Van Veeteren's food and bathing - maybe this is supposed to make him human but it was just too much detail.… (more)

Mind’s Eye. An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery. Hakan Nesser. 2008. It was so good to slip into new Swedish Noir! Janek Mitter wakes up one morning and finds his wife dead in the bathtub. He has no memory of the event but claimed he did not kill his wife. He is convicted and sent to a mental health institution to be evaluated. However, when he is murdered in his bed Van Veeteren and his team must investigate Mitter’s murder and reopen the investigation of his wife’s murder. We get an occasional glimpses of the murderer as Van Vetteren looks back into the lives of the victims. Van Veeteren is terse and somewhat depressed. He has no illusions about the depth of depravity to which is fellow human beings can sink, but he chews on toothpicks and listens to classical music and manages to identify the killer.… (more)