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51 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another Chief Inspector to love!, June 24, 2008
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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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
unputdownable -- a very compelling read, June 30, 2008
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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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"I think this is a nasty business.", September 18, 2008
In Hakan Nesser's "Mind's Eye," a high school teacher named Janek Mitter finds his wife of three months, Eva Maria Ringmar, drowned in their bathtub. When Mitter is accused of murdering her, he has no alibi. He claims that, on the night in question, he was asleep in the next room after drinking too much and awoke the next morning suffering from a massive hangover. His defense lawyer candidly tells Mitter that his story is unconvincing. However, Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is not completely sold on the husband's guilt. When a second shocking crime follows on the heels of the first one, Van Veeteren and his team face the daunting task of finding a killer whose boundless rage impels him to commit unspeakable acts.
"Mind's Eye" is not a typical murder mystery. Nesser's biting wit and black humor serve as a sharp counterpoint to an exasperating inquiry that turns out to have many unexpected twists and turns. (In one hilarious scene, a witness that he is interrogating gives Van Veeteren a massage to ease his aching back.) VV, as he is known, is successful at his job because he is an intelligent and forceful leader (although he can be sarcastic, cranky, and patronizing at times), and also because he is curious and capable of making imaginative mental leaps. He doggedly pursues every lead, no matter how tangential. Far from being falsely modest, Van Veeteren prides himself on "being the best interrogating officer in the district, possibly in the country." He wastes no effort on political correctness or deferring to his superiors; VV is very much his own man.
All of the characters are a bit off-beat. Mitter cracks jokes and refuses to act deferential, even during his trial. Chief Inspector Van Veeteren has a rather unsettled personal life and an obsession with beating his long-suffering colleague, Inspector Munster, at badminton. The introspective Van Veeteren has grown cynical over the years and longs for a life of ease after retirement when he will be able to rid himself of the "feeling of disgust and impotence" that goes with the job. Munster dreads the grueling task of tracking down a suspect. They were "hemmed in by questions and answers and guesses in a slow but inexorable search for the right track." If they were to make one wrong turn, not only would they be wasting valuable time, but the murderer might conceivably strike again.
Nesser is a fluid writer and Laurie Thompson translates expertly from the Swedish. The dialogue is lively and often amusing, and the plot provides enough clues for the armchair detective to take a shot at figuring out whodunit. This police procedural, like so many others, demonstrates why so many homicide investigators become emotionally hardened, are incapable of staying happily married, and develop stomach ulcers. Pursuing murderers is, indeed, "a nasty business," but Nesser also makes it an entertaining one.
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