Showing results by author "Håkan Nesser" in All Categories

July 2007. A letter arrives on Inspector Barbarotti’s doorstep detailing a murder that is about to take place in his quiet Swedish town. By the time the police track down the subject of the letter, he is already dead. So when a second letter arrives, then a third, and a fourth, it’s a game of cat and mouse to stop the killer before he can make good on all of his promises.

It's December in the quiet Swedish town of Kymlinge, and the Hermansson family are gathering to celebrate father Karl-Erik and eldest daughter Ebba's joint landmark birthdays. But beneath the guise of happy festivities, tensions are running high, and it's not long before the night takes a dark and unexpected turn....

Janek Mitter stumbles into his bathroom one morning after a night of heavy drinking, to find his beautiful young wife, Eva, floating dead in the bath. She has been brutally murdered. Yet even during his trial Mitter cannot summon a single memory of attacking Eva, nor a clue as to who could have killed her if he had not. Only once he has been convicted and locked away in an asylum for the criminally insane does he have a snatch of insight - but is it too late?

A young woman shivers in the December cold as her mother's body is laid to rest in a cemetery. The only thing that warms her is the thought of the revenge she will soon take.... Then a middle-aged man is killed at his home, shot twice in the chest and twice below the belt. He had recently received a series of bizarre phone calls where an old song is played down the line - evoking an eerie sense of both familiarity and unease. Before the police can find the culprit, a second man is killed in the same way.

An unmissable hospital appointment is looming for Inspector Van Veeteren when a corpse is found rolled in a rotting carpet by a young child playing in a local beauty spot. Missing head and limbs, the torso is too badly decomposed for forensic identification - bar one crucial detail.... Circumstantial evidence soon points to a local man, a double murderer who disappeared nine months before, shortly after being released on parole - a local hero turned monster after being convicted of killing two women over a span of three decades.

At 59 years old, Valdemar Roos is tired of life. Working a job he hates, with a wife he barely talks to and two step-daughters he doesn't get on with, he doesn't have a lot to look forward to. Then, one day, a winning lottery ticket gives him an opportunity to start afresh. Without telling a soul, he quits his job and buys a hut in the remote Swedish countryside. Every day he travels down to this man-made oasis, returning each evening to his unsuspecting wife. Life couldn't be better, until a young woman arrives in paradise.

It begins in 1969. Six young people arrive in Uppsala. Different circumstances push the three young couples together, and, over the course of a few years, they become friends. But a summer trip through Eastern Europe changes everything, and, when their time at Uppsala University is over, it also signals the end of something else. Years later, a lecturer at Lund University is found dead at the bottom of a cliff in the woods close to Kymlinge. And chillingly, it is the very same spot where one of the Uppsala students died 35 years before.

In the dead of night, in the pouring rain, a drunk driver smashes his car into a young man. He abandons the body at the side of the road, but the incident will set in motion a chain of events which will change his life forever. Soon Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, now retired from the Maardam police force, will face his greatest trial yet as someone close to him is, inexplicably, murdered.

Ein neuer spannender Fall für Kommissar Van Veeteren - die furiose Geschichte eines fast perfekten Mordes. An einem sonnigen Augusttag wird ein Mann aus dem Gefängnis entlassen. An einem regnerischen Apriltag finden spielende Kinder seine Leiche...

Als Janek Mitter eines Morgens mit einem entsetzlichen Kater aufwacht, liegt seine Frau Eva ermordet in der Badewanne. Er ist sich sicher, dass er nicht der Mörder ist, aber beweisen kann er es nicht. Am Vorabend hatte er mächtig gezecht, und nun fehlen ihm einige Stunden in der Erinnerung...

A dark and sinister case from the past comes back to haunt Chief Inspector Van Veeteren in the final novel in the Van Veeteren series, The G File by Håkan Nesser. 1987. Verlangan, a former cop turned private detective, is hired by a woman to follow her husband, Jaan 'G' Hennan. A few days later, his client is found dead at the bottom of an empty swimming pool. Maardam police, led by Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, investigate the case.

A community is left reeling after a teacher - Arnold Maager - is convicted of murdering his female pupil Winnie Maas. It seems the girl had been pregnant with Maager's child. Years later, on her 18th birthday, Maager's daughter Mikaela finally learns the terrible truth about her father. Desperate for answers, Mikaela travels to the institution at Lejnice, where Maager has been held since his trial. But soon afterwards she inexplicably vanishes.

Sweden 2012. When Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti returns to work after a terrible personal tragedy, his boss asks him to investigate a cold case, hoping to ease him back gently into his police duties. Five years previously a shy electrician, Arnold Morinder, disappeared from the face of the earth, the only clue his blue moped abandoned in a nearby swamp. At the time his partner, Ellen Bjarnebo, claimed that Arnold had probably travelled to Norway never to return. But Ellen is one of Sweden’s most notorious killers.

The Strangler's Honeymoon is the penultimate gripping Scandinavian crime thriller in the Van Veeteren series by Håkan Nesser. Desperately lonely, 16-year-old Monica Kammerle has little idea of what she is getting herself into when she begins an affair with her mother's latest partner, the sophisticated Benjamin Kerran.... Months later, when a woman's strangled body is found, the Maardam police must discover who has committed this terrible crime.

Es ist eine neblige, nasskalte Nacht. Der Regen gießt in Strömen, und der Junge, der am Straßenrand geht, ist kaum zu sehen. Als der Mann den Aufprall hört, ist es bereits zu spät: die Verletzungen des Jungen sind tödlich – und der schwer angetrunkene Fahrer gerät in Panik und macht sich aus dem Staub. Warum sollte er sein ganzes Leben zerstören wegen dieses Unglücksfalls? Sich von seiner Karriere verabschieden? Seine Zukunft aufs Spiel setzen, die auf einmal in leuchtenden Farben vor ihm steht.

Four friends celebrate winning the lottery. Just hours later, one of them - Waldemar Leverkuhn - is found in his home, stabbed to death. With Chief Inspector Van Veeteren on sabbatical, working in a secondhand bookshop, the case is assigned to Inspector Münster. But when another member of the lottery group disappears as well as Leverkuhn's neighbour, Münster appeals to Van Veeteren for assistance.

Two men are brutally murdered with an axe in the quiet coastal town of Kaalbringen, and Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, bored on holiday nearby, is summoned to assist the local authorities. The local police chief, just days away from retirement, is determined to wrap things up before he goes. But there is no clear link between the victims. Then one of Van Veeteren's colleagues, a brilliant young female detective, goes missing - perhaps she has reached Borkmann's Point before anyone else....

From a best-selling, award-winning Swedish author, The Living and the Dead in Winsford is a gripping and deeply atmospheric psychological thriller set on Exmoor. A woman arrives in the village of Winsford on Exmoor. She has travelled a long way and chosen her secluded cottage carefully. Maria's sole intention is to outlive her beloved dog, Castor.

In the heart of summer, the country swelters in a fug of heat. In the beautiful forested lake town of Sorbinowo, Sergeant Merwin Kluuge's tranquil existence is shattered when he receives a phone call from an anonymous woman. She tells him that a girl has gone missing from the summer camp of the mysterious The Pure Life, a religious sect buried deep in the woods. Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is recruited to help solve the mystery.

Zwei Männer sind tot. Auf ganz ähnliche, brutale Weise ums Leben gekommen. Doch welche Verbindung besteht zwischen ihnen? Inspektor van Veeteren entdeckt eine heiße Spur, die in die Vergangenheit führt-und zu einer schönen jungen Frau.