The Return

February 26, 2007
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.

April 9, 2007
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.

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2007
The celebrated Swedish crime novelist Nesser arrived in the U.S. last year with the superb " Borkmann's Point." Here, in the manner of fellow Swede Ake Edwardson's " Never End" (2006), Nesser shifts the focus from his hero, the charming, world-weary, Maigret-like Inspector Van Veeteren, who is on the mend from cancer surgery, to his subordinates, each with some backstory of his or her own. The case itself, involving the killing of a convicted murderer on the day he was released from prison, quickly widens into an examination of the dead man's guilt, which requires considerable burrowing into the secrets and repressed passions of a group of tight-lipped residents of a small town in rural Sweden. Van Veeteren appears in time for a shocking finale, reminiscent of Michael Connelly's " Echo Park" (2006), in which the hero appears to have crossed a significant ethical line. Nesser doesn't seem completely comfortable juggling police-procedural and psychological-thriller elements here, but the novel--if not quite up to the standards of " Borkmann's Point--"is still another solid example of why the Swedes have become the talk of crime fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)