The Return: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery [Hardcover]

Hakan Nesser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2007

While on a field trip through the woods on the outskirts of Behren, a young girl stumbles upon a decomposing body wrapped in a carpet and lying in a ditch. The body has no hands, feet, or head, but this was not the work of wild animals. A brutal killer is on the loose--but who is the victim?

From the hospital bed where he is recovering from surgery, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren begins to piece together the fragmentary clues that involve a nun who hides a secret, a crippled woman, the murders of two other women, and a former track star who served two sentences for murder and has been missing since the date of his return to society.

No one is who they appear to be, and a sleepy village finds itself reopening cases long considered closed. With the assistance of his colleagues, Van Veeteren faces the prospect of taking the law into his own hands in the face of a flawed system of justice. This taut psychological thriller affirms Håkan Nesser's place in the landscape of international crime fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nesser's latest contemporary police procedural, set in his Swedish homeland, is an excellent puzzler that will remind many of the Inspector Morse series. Nesser's sleuth, Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, is on the eve of major surgery when a baffling murder case is dumped on his team; a mutilated corpse has been found in a ditch, and is eventually identified as that of Leopold Verhaven, a recently released double murderer. Verhaven's crimes were odd ones-vicious attacks on women decades apart-and his own killing raises the spectre that he was not guilty of them. Van Veeteren and his squad deftly delve through decades of faded eyewitness recollections before reaching a satisfying solution, albeit one that requires the inspector to cross a line to achieve justice. The sardonic Van Veeteren is an enteratining lead character, and this book should lead many to seek out earlier entries in the series.
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Review

Praise for Borkmann's Point by Håkan Nesser

"Nesser has a penetrating eye for the skull beneath the skin."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Keeps you on the edge of your seat... You don't want it to end."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"International best-seller Nesser make his U.S. debut with this classy and rewarding whodunit, which won the Swedish Crime Writers' Academy Prize for Best Novel in 1994... Thompson's smooth traslation makes this worthy mystery readily accessible to American readers."
--Publishers Weekly

"Inspector Van Veeteren seems destined for a place amongst the great European detectives."
--Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse mysteries

"Appealing... Engaging... Unexpectedly poignant... A lean whodunit whose narravtive speed and concision are admirable... Mystery fans should rejoice."
--Richmond Times-Dispatch

"Satisfying... It is spare and wry, short on cliffhangers, and long on atmospherics. It sucked me in."
--Esquire

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; Tra edition (March 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375421971
• ISBN-13: 978-0375421976
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #797,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mankell Must Share the Spotlight, May 26, 2007

By 

A Discerning Reader (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Return: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery (Hardcover)

Inspector Van Veeteren is the real gem in this budding series of police procedural novels written by Swede Hakan Nesser. Van Veeteren is the classic chief inspector--crotchety, brusque, prone to flashes of insight gained from mundane life, and a soft spot for his junior partner.

Whether he's driving around listening to Monteverdi or grousing about his upcoming surgery, the inspector manages to make the book funny and interesting. Nesser somehow manages to write just a little bit differently about life and happiness, and he injects reality into his characters that make them endearing. The plot is not all that gripping, but Mr. Nesser moves the storyline along nicely without getting bogged down in meaningless descriptions or red herrings.

At the end of the day, however, the characters make the book. Van Veeteren is the center, but his coworkers and associates are ones you'd like to get to know. Using his native Sweden makes Nesser's books even more interesting to the US audience that is just learning to love this author worthy to share the table with Henning Mankell.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A real policier, August 30, 2007

By 

Blue in Washington "Barry Ballow" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Return: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery (Hardcover)

One of the great things that has happened in mystery publishing over the past few years, is the flood of translated books from overseas which has given American (and other Anglophone) readers a new world of social and political perspectives through the genre. Hakan Nesser is one of these recently translated authors and a very good one, he is. "The Return," part of his Inspector Van Veeteren series, has the feel of an authentic police investigation throughout. The reader is taken through many routine interrogations in a murder investigation which only very gradually add up to a solution to the case. The case itself is bizaare and convoluted, involving the murders of three people, including a convicted murderer recently paroled from prison. While the central figure in the book is Chief Inspector Van Veeteren of the Maardam police, his junior colleagues get most of the story space here and their characters are well developed and credible. Oddly, though author Nesser is a Swede, his story is set in a small city in The Netherlands.

This is classic detective story that will be appreciated by any fan of this domain of fiction.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A double murder becomes triple, September 23, 2007

By 

Cory D. Slipman (Rockville Centre, N.Y.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Return: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery (Hardcover)

Hakan Nesser's "The Return" is another of the good Swedish police procedurals translated for consumption by the English speaking market. On the whole, the novel is a compelling read diminished only by Nesser's shallow development of his characters except for the victimized villain. The author has a penchant for commencing chapters with riveting plot action without identifying his characters. While this makes the action suspenseful, is can also cause confusion.

The storyline revolves around an inquest conducted by Chief Inspector Van Veeteren and his squad of detectives in the Maardam police department. A decapitated corpse also missing hands and feet was discovered wrapped in a carpet by a pre-schooler in a wooded area during a class outing. Immediately the investigation was two pronged. Exactly who was the victim and who was his murderer?

Adding depth to the storyline Van Veeteren was being operated on for a colon resection owing to cancer. He would conduct the investigation in part from his convalescent bed.

The detectives soon discover that the victim was one Leopold Verhaven. The notorious Verhaven, once a world class middle distance runner, had served two separate 12 year prison terms for the murders of two young women he was romantically involved with. As Van Veeteren looks back at the evidence from the previous killings he gets the feeling that Verhaven might hane been innocent.

Using unorthodox means, Van Veeteren and his minions take great pains to uncover the identity of Verhaven's murderer, speculating that this person also committed the crimes that Verhaven was implicated for.