October 15, 2015
Now that he's retired from the Maardam CID, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren (Munster's Case, 2012, etc.) gets to try on an unwelcome new role: grieving father. On his way home from an evening with his girlfriend, 16-year-old Wim Felders is killed by a hit-and-run driver. The police don't suspect a thing, but someone else does, someone who saw the accident scene and is willing to blackmail the driver. The unidentified driver, who's just taken up with Vera Miller, a married nurse from the New Rumsford Hospital, has different ideas and promptly murders the man who picks up the bundle of cash he's just dropped off. This time the police are brought to attention by the identification of that second victim as Erich Van Veeteren, the beloved Chief Inspector's ex-con, ex-addict son. Knowing nothing of the blackmail attempt, they grind through a series of interviews, beginning with Marlene Frey, Erich's pregnant fiancee, without knowing what breakthrough they're looking for or how to recognize it when they find it. Things are no better for the murderer, who receives a second blackmail note that reveals, to his consternation, that he's killed the wrong man and that whoever has his number now plans to squeeze him much harder than before. Van Veeteren, who at first seems to have nothing to do but dispense sage observations--"A crime is born in the gap between the morality of society and that of the individual"--turns out to play a satisfyingly crucial role in breaking the case. No frills, no subplots, no unnecessary moving parts: an autumnal procedural that illustrates what superior results you can get by stripping away the extras.
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November 15, 2015
In Maardam, Sweden, the hit-and-run murder of a teenager launches a chain of events that claims four lives before police unravel the cases' barely discernible connections. The driver scours away the evidence of his drunken crime and lays low. But when a blackmailer threatens to reveal the driver's secret, the upper-crust killer plots a violent solution. Meanwhile, Van Veeteren, still revered as the chief inspector even in retirement, is devastated when his son, Erich, is found bludgeoned to death. The Maardam police are stonewalled by lack of evidence but begin making headway after Van Veeteren uses his instincts to discover a perplexing motive. Often curmudgeonly, Van Veeteren displays a softer side as he struggles to deal with Erich's death, and the result makes a magnificent contrast to the killer's dispassionate voice. Like Kate Atkinson, Nesser draws believable lines between crimes in this series' sixth tale, linking them with a trail of psychological crumbs and adding a bit of heart to the series' moody atmosphere and cerebral thrills.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)