Review: Van Veeteren Mysteries
Mar. 3rd, 2015 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI can no longer remember who, but someone recommended the book The Mind's Eye. After I read it, I looked up my notes on who recommended it and discovered that I had checked out the wrong book. Interestingly, both books start out with someone who has lost his memory.
I've since also lost those notes on who recommended what, so this blog entry is not making as much sense as I prefer! But apparently the book by Douglas E Richards had been recommended, and I checked out the one by Haken Nesser (with a little circle over the "a"), who turns out to be an award-winning novelist from Sweden. And the book I read is the first in a series. So hey, it's nice to accidentally find cool stuff.
I absolutely loved the prose. It's read-aloud quality. The characters were interesting. The plot was tight. But it punched me in the stomach a few times with good people getting killed. And I don't think it played fair in letting you try to figure out who the murderer is.
Still, I loved that prose so much that I checked out some more books from this series and have just finished the second book, Borkmann's Point. Again, there is some very nice writing. I still have the book, so let me see if I can find you some tasty morsels.
Well, there's the first sentence:
Had Ernst Simmel known he was to be the Axman's second victim, he would no doubt have downed a few more drinks at The Blue Ship.
And here's a good description:
He could hear the telephone ringing when he came to the gate. Automatically he started moving more slowly, shortening his strides, fiddling with his keys, in the hope that it would stop ringing by the time he entered the house. In vain. The sound was still carving stubbornly through the gloomy silence. He picked up the receiver.
Here's a little dialog for you:
"Do you know if your husband had a relationship with any other woman?"
Mrs. Simmel stopped chewing and tried to look as if she hadn't understood the question.
"With another woman?"
"Or several. If he'd been unfaithful, for instance."
"No ..." She shook her head slowly. "Who might that have been? Who would have had him?"
That was one way of looking at it, of course. Beate Moerk took a drink of coffee in order to suppress a smile.
Again the plot was tight and everything made sense in the end. This one didn't punch me so hard (until the end) but seemed to play even less fair, so I read it again. I'm not great with details; maybe there were plenty of clues and I just missed them. Nope, there were one or two tiny clues, but there was at least one exceedingly misleading scene, so I'm going to stick with my first judgement.
I don't like the Van Veeteren character as well as I did in the first book, especially after he decided he didn't like himself (he got even worse after that). But I liked plenty of other characters. And the stupid ones were mostly there for comic relief (and not very often).
Nevertheless, I'm reading all the books I can get my hands on just because the prose is so great. The books are also good for if you want to really feel what it's like to be different kinds of people. Even people who commit heinous crimes. Maybe I really don't--this world is a little darker than I like to think the world really is.
I've since also lost those notes on who recommended what, so this blog entry is not making as much sense as I prefer! But apparently the book by Douglas E Richards had been recommended, and I checked out the one by Haken Nesser (with a little circle over the "a"), who turns out to be an award-winning novelist from Sweden. And the book I read is the first in a series. So hey, it's nice to accidentally find cool stuff.
I absolutely loved the prose. It's read-aloud quality. The characters were interesting. The plot was tight. But it punched me in the stomach a few times with good people getting killed. And I don't think it played fair in letting you try to figure out who the murderer is.
Still, I loved that prose so much that I checked out some more books from this series and have just finished the second book, Borkmann's Point. Again, there is some very nice writing. I still have the book, so let me see if I can find you some tasty morsels.
Well, there's the first sentence:
Had Ernst Simmel known he was to be the Axman's second victim, he would no doubt have downed a few more drinks at The Blue Ship.
And here's a good description:
He could hear the telephone ringing when he came to the gate. Automatically he started moving more slowly, shortening his strides, fiddling with his keys, in the hope that it would stop ringing by the time he entered the house. In vain. The sound was still carving stubbornly through the gloomy silence. He picked up the receiver.
Here's a little dialog for you:
"Do you know if your husband had a relationship with any other woman?"
Mrs. Simmel stopped chewing and tried to look as if she hadn't understood the question.
"With another woman?"
"Or several. If he'd been unfaithful, for instance."
"No ..." She shook her head slowly. "Who might that have been? Who would have had him?"
That was one way of looking at it, of course. Beate Moerk took a drink of coffee in order to suppress a smile.
Again the plot was tight and everything made sense in the end. This one didn't punch me so hard (until the end) but seemed to play even less fair, so I read it again. I'm not great with details; maybe there were plenty of clues and I just missed them. Nope, there were one or two tiny clues, but there was at least one exceedingly misleading scene, so I'm going to stick with my first judgement.
I don't like the Van Veeteren character as well as I did in the first book, especially after he decided he didn't like himself (he got even worse after that). But I liked plenty of other characters. And the stupid ones were mostly there for comic relief (and not very often).
Nevertheless, I'm reading all the books I can get my hands on just because the prose is so great. The books are also good for if you want to really feel what it's like to be different kinds of people. Even people who commit heinous crimes. Maybe I really don't--this world is a little darker than I like to think the world really is.
no subject
on 2015-03-04 11:41 pm (UTC)-Sally
no subject
on 2015-03-05 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
on 2015-03-05 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2015-03-06 04:27 am (UTC)And I also have to admit that I did the first lesson of Swedish in Duolingo last week. Just because I have no clue how to pronounce most of the names. (But it's annoying to switch back and forth between languages in Duolingo.)