Review of The Return by Hakan Nesser

Yet another in the procession of Scandinavian writers being translated and released in the UK/USA to be gobbled up by followers of the crime genre.

Not to say that this novel doesn’t bear comparison with the finest of Henning Mankell because it sits up there with his best.

Of course, this being only the second of Nesser’s books to make the jump to English (the first is Borkmann’s Point), they are not being brought out in the order they were written. I found this slightly annoying with the Wallander series but overall found that it didn’t diminish the quality of reading.

The Return focuses on the discovery of a headless, armless and legless torso in the woods by a bunch of school children. When the police investigate, after some work they find it is the body of a ex-convict just released after serving a sentence for murder and who had also served a previous sentence for another murder 30 years previously.

The main character in these books is Chief Inspector Van Veeteren who at the start of the book is just about to go into hospital to have a tumour removed from his large intestine, so he directs the investigation from his bed and his foot soldiers do all the leg work.

Although the book is quite dark in tone due to the Inspector’s serious illness, there is humour to be found. It is amusing that Van Veeteren is in constant search of a beer and a smoke. He even manages to get his beer in hospital!

The investigation proceeds along slowly while he convalesces in hospital. Then when he is released he is told that enough time has been spent on the case and that the investigation should be wound up.

Of course, Van Veeteren decides to proceed in his own time to finish off the case. The main reason being that he suspects that the victim as actually innocent of the earlier crimes and that his killer feared his own unmasking by him. Of course, Van Veeteren suspects the establishment of trying to avoid being look bad with a faulty conviction.

The plot is quite complicated but connects well. Van Veeteren seems an interesting character and I look forward to reading Borkmann’s Point.

Small point, it is not clear where the story is set although to me, the place names and character names do not seem Swedish. It could be Holland or…..