Showing results by author "Håkan Nesser" in All Categories

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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....

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.

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.

Spätestens seit Stieg Larssons Millennium-Trilogie weiß jeder: Wer Spannung liebt, kommt an Krimis aus dem hohen Norden nicht vorbei. Sie spielen mit dem Kontrast zwischen der Idylle des Landes und grausamen Verbrechen, der Ruhe des nordischen Lebens und dem gewaltsamen Tod. In dieser einzigartigen Sammlung hat John-Henri Holmberg, einer der besten Kenner der skandinavischen Kriminalliteratur, Erzählungen der bedeutendsten und beliebtesten schwedischen Spannungsautoren zusammengefasst.

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?

Drei Kriminalfälle aus Maardam: An einem stürmischen Abend Ende Januar klopft es an Judith Millers Tür. Sie öffnet es, ohne zu wissen, wen sie vorfinden wird, und ohne zu wissen, dass ihr Leben in dieser Sekunde eine völlig neue Richtung einschlagen wird. Es ist der Moment, auf den sie für immer zurückblicken wird, als Beginn der besten und schlimmsten Dinge, die ihr widerfahren sind. Ebenso wissen weder Anna Kowalski noch der Besitzer der Pferde Black und Brown, dass nur ein paar Schritte abseits des gewohnten Weges unwiederbringliche Folgen haben können.

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.

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.

Was geschah mit Mikaela Lijphart und ihrem Vater? Beide sind wie vom Erdboden verschluckt - kurz nach ihrem ersten Treffen nach sechzehn Jahren, die der Vater in der Psychiatrie verbracht hatte, nachdem er zum Mörder geworden war. Und wer ist der Tote vom Strand? Zwei Verschwundene und ein ungelöster Mord bedeuten, dass Ewa Morenos Urlaub nicht ganz so verläuft wie geplant. Statt entspannt in der Sonne zu liegen, wird die Polizeiinspektorin aus Van Veeterens Truppe mit einer Menge mysteriöser Vorfälle, zahlreichen Ungereimtheiten und zwielichtigen Kollegen konfrontiert.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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....