Showing results by author "Håkan Nesser" in All Categories

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....

An ex-con is brutally murdered with an ax in Kaalbringen. Then the body of a wealthy real estate mogul is found, also the victim of a violent attack. There appears to be a serial killer on the loose, and Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is called in to help the local police. As details surrounding the grisly murders are collected, Van Veeteren finds little to go on. But then there's another murder, and shortly thereafter one of Van Veeteren's colleagues, a promising female detective, goes missing.

For Waldemar Leverkuhn, a retiree living with his wife in a small unit in an unassuming block of apartments, the day couldn't begin more auspiciously. He, along with three friends, have won the lottery. It's a modest but healthy sum of money and the old men toast to their good luck with a celebratory dinner. The day ends, however, with Leverkuhn drunk, belligerent, and eventually dead in his bed, stabbed 28 times in the chest. After a cursory investigation, Leverkuhn's quiet, weary wife incredibly confesses to murder.

Der bekannte Künstler Ludvig Rute lädt seine drei Geschwister samt Anhang über die Weihnachtsfeiertage in ein abgelegenes Gehöft auf Gotland ein. Obwohl sie nicht wissen, was sie dort erwartet, reisen sie von weit her an. Sie haben sich viele Jahre lang nicht gesehen, die Atmosphäre ist angespannt. Es wird nicht besser, als der Gastgeber am Morgen des ersten Feiertags tot aufgefunden wird. Bei starkem Schneefall nehmen Gunnar Barbarotti und seine Kollegin und Ehefrau Eva Backman die Ermittlungen auf. War es ein Bilderdieb, der in das Haus eingedrungen ist, oder kommt der Täter aus der Familie?

It starts with a drunk man killing a boy as he hits him with his car. Thinking no one has seen him, he feels he's off the hook. Until he receives a message telling him that the sender knows what he's done, and unless he pays him a ransom, to be left in a bag at a secluded men's room, he'll squeal. The killer does as instructed, but as he sees a young man leave with said bag, he then kills the young man.

After hearing her mother’s deathbed confession and following the dreary funeral, Maria Adler realizes she has no other option but to seize upon her mother’s imperative to do something. Dissolving the life she loathes, Maria changes her appearance and disappears. When she emerges, revenge is her sole occupation. Inspector Van Veeteren and his associates are left bewildered by the curious murder of a man shot twice in the heart and twice below the belt. He was a quiet, utterly dull man, and the only suspicious activity his surviving wife can recall is a series of peculiar phone calls.

Chief Inspector Van Veeteren knew that murder cases were never as open-and-shut as this one: Janek Mitter woke one morning with a brutal hangover and discovered his wife of three months lying facedown in the bathtub, dead. With only the flimsiest excuse as his defense, he is found guilty of a drunken crime of passion and imprisoned in a mental institution.

While on a field trip through the woods on the outskirts of Behren, a young girl stumbles upon a decomposing body wrapped in a carpet and lying in a ditch. The body has no hands, feet, or head, but this was not the work of wild animals. A brutal killer is on the loose, but who is the victim? From the hospital bed where he is recovering from surgery, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren begins to piece together the fragmentary clues that involve a nun who hides a secret, a crippled woman, the murders of two other women, and a missing former track star who served two sentences for murder....

A secretive and dubious religious sect comes under investigation as one of their young members, a girl on the cusp of puberty, is found dead in the forest, brutally raped and strangled. Adopting to remain silent over the incident rather than defend themselves, the members of The Pure Life - led by their intelligent but perturbing messiah figure, Oscar Yellineck - simultaneously anger and mystify Van Veeteren and the other detectives on the case.

Unos días antes de Navidad, la familia Hermansson al completo se reúne para celebrar los sesenta y cinco años de Karl-Erik, un padre encomiable y maestro jubilado, y los cuarenta de Ebba, su hija favorita. Unas horas después, se producen dos desapariciones inexplicables: primero, Robert, la oveja negra de la familia; al día siguiente Henrik, el hijo mayor de Ebba, quien desaparece en medio de la noche sin dejar rastro.

Gegen Inspektor Barbarotti wird in Stockholm polizeilich ermittelt. Er und seine Kollegin Eva Backman gerieten in eine Situation, die für einen Jugendlichen tödlich endete. Um Abstand von den Ereignissen zu bekommen, beschließen Barbarotti und Backman, sich in die herbstliche Abgeschiedenheit Gotlands zurückzuziehen. Doch auch dort findet Barbarotti nicht die ersehnte Ruhe, denn er glaubt in einem Fahrradfahrer jenen unglückseligen Busfahrer zu erkennen, der für den Tod einer Schulklasse verantwortlich war, und vor sechs Jahren spurlos von einer Fähre verschwand.

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...

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.

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.

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....

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.

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?

Van Veeteren und Barbarotti - das einmalige Zusammentreffen der zwei bekanntesten Ermittler aus den Krimis von Håkan Nesser. Noch während Marten Winckelstroop und Rejmus Fiste in die Kleine Schule von Oosterby gehen, gründen sie den Verein der Linkshänder. Jahrzehnte später brennt eine alte Pension bis auf die Grundmauern nieder, und einige Menschen kommen dabei ums Leben. Das eine hängt mit dem anderen zusammen, aber es lebt keiner mehr, der erklären könnte wie. Fast keiner. Seit dem Erscheinen des letzten Krimis über Kommissar Van Veeteren sind fünfzehn Jahre vergangen.

Vier Rentner feiern in einer Kneipe ihren Lottogewinn. Reichlich angetrunken machen sich die vier auf den Heimweg. Stunden später ist einer von ihnen tot, hinterrücks erstochen in seiner eigenen Wohnung. Kommissar Münster übernimmt den Fall, denn Kommissar Van Veeteren hat sich für ein Jahr beurlauben lassen und arbeitet in einem Antiquariat. Doch keiner seiner Kollegen glaubt, dass er von der Ermittlungsarbeit lassen kann. Und in der Tat holt sich Münster schon bald Rat bei Van Veeteren, denn der Fall wird immer mysteriöser.

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.