The Return: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery

by: Håkan Nesser

Published by: Vintage Crime

Reviewed By Ginger McBride

Imagine growing up in a town where everyone was convinced you were slightly deranged. Also imagine spending twelve years in prison for a murder you didn’t commit. You’re released from prison, return to your home only to find yourself once again committed of yet another murder you did not commit. You are sent back to prison for another twelve years. At one point in time during the last sentence, someone from outside the prison reveals to you who was responsible for the murders for which you are being punished. On the day of your release, you return to your house with only a few plans in mind. Before any of your plans can play out, you are brutally murdered, only the trunk of your body is left to be found by an unsuspecting little girl.

Such is the short, unproductive and frustrating life of Leopold Verhaven. And that frustration, upon Verhaven’s death, quickly became the frustration of Chief Inspector Van Veeteran and his team. As the interviews begin, it becomes obvious that Verhaven was framed and that those who put him on trial closed their eyes to the obvious and helped put an innocent man behind bars for almost a quarter of century. With this new knowledge, Veeteran makes it his personal mission to solve the case and seek justice for the deceased. After being called off the case by his superiors, Veeteran is more determined than before to finish the case, which may mean stepping over the lines of laws and seeking justice in a different way.

Translated from Swedish, the book is somewhat difficult to follow for American readers unfamiliar with the culture and land of Verhaven and Veetran; however, this book is suspenseful, intriguing, perplexing, and wonderful. The author is able to communicate over cultural barriers and draws the reader into a story that is strange enough to be fiction but real enough to be true. His mix of the everyday and strange, the normal and anomalous, the mundane and the bizarre, makes this book one that is difficult to put down.

Armchair Interviews agrees.