Woman with Birthmark

February 16, 2009
Chief Insp. Van Veeteren heads a sterling ensemble cast in Nesser’s fine police procedural, his second (after Borkmann’s Point
) to win the best novel award from the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy. A nameless young woman, soon after burying her mother and learning what sealed her mother’s fate and her own, embarks on a ruthless course of vengeance. While the woman’s motivation remains vague, her method is crystal clear—killing shots at close range followed by additional shots “below the belt.” There are virtually no clues when the first victim is found, and precious few when the second occurs less than two weeks later. Slow, meticulous police work eventually produces a tenuous connection between the victims—one that suggests a potential pool of almost 30 targets. Nesser keeps readers guessing whether the killer will complete her gruesome task before the police can uncover the fatal link that binds killer and victims.

February 15, 2009
Sweden's Chief Inspector Van Veeteren and his squad seek a serial killer avenging a terrible crime.

The woman calling herself Maria Adler remembers well her mother's weary expression in the months before her premature and unlamented demise. Now she's determined to seek revenge for the crime that drove her mother to a life so marginal that her death created scarcely a ripple. Soon she's claimed her first victim: Ryszard Malik, a dealer in restaurant equipment. The unusually emphatic method of execution—two bullets in the chest, two more below the belt—naturally calls forth comment from Maardam's Inspector Reinhart and Chief Inspector Van Veeteren. But it's not until bullying schoolteacher Rickard Maasleitner is dispatched in exactly the same way that the police realize they have a serial murderer on their hands, and that, defying the odds, this one may just be a woman. Although they manage to keep most of the details out of the papers, they aren't the only ones to connect both victims to the United Service Staff College class of 1965. Two other members of the class, seeing the pattern that's developing, take steps to stop the one-woman crime wave themselves, either by defending themselves forcefully at the point of possible attack or by taking the battle preemptively to the woman who's made them fear for their lives.

Van Veeteren's fourth English-language appearance (Mind's Eye, 2008, etc.) produces the amalgam all procedures seek: a distillation of commonplace crime and detection into something altogether more intense and humane.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2009
Inspector Van Veeteren would like nothing better than to sleep through the entire month of January, as winter in Sweden makes the usually volatile detective slow and cranky. Naturally, he is not happy when his team is assigned the case of a man shot in the heart and the groin in his own front hallway. Neither clues nor motives are forthcoming until another man is shot in the same way, with the same weapon. This fourth series entry (following Minds Eye, 2008) is one of the best of the lot in terms of character development, and its right up there in plotting, too. The taut, fast-paced, and enthralling story intersperses scenes of the killer with scenes of the investigation, a technique that serves to ratchet suspense ever tighter. Fans of Karin Fossum will enjoy the peek into the mind of the murderer, and devotees of Jo Nesbo and Henning Mankell will agree that Nesser belongs in that select circle of A-list Scandinavian crime novelists.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)