The Inspector and Silence An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery By Hakan Nesser Translated into English by Laurie Thompson An Unabridged Recording Narrated by Simon Vance An Audible Release (2011) Genre: Crime, Mystery This book is also available in standard print.

Reviewed by Israel Drazin - July 21, 2011

Hakan Nesser is the author of four other books, all of which received awards. This one has an obviously good chance of bringing Nesser his fifth award.

Chief Inspector Van Veeteren has been able to solve all but one case in his many years with the police, but he is tired of police work. "One of these days I simply won't be able to stand this world anymore." He dislikes the Swedish weather, looks forward to a warm relaxing vacation in Crete, and thinks about retirement. In fact, he has seen an advertisement seeking an employee for a job and he is thinking of resigning from the police and taking the job. His success over the years is not due so much to logical reasoning, the Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie method, but to interesting and revealing foot slogging persistence and his celebrated intuition.

His plans for a vacation is interrupted when a local police acting chief receives a telephone call from a woman, who refuses to identify herself, that a girl is missing from the summer camp of a religious cult group. The acting chief calls the group and is told that no one is missing. He then receives a second call threatening that if he doesn't act, she will notify the newspapers. Who is she? Why is she telephoning?

Van Veeteren is called in, visits the Pure Life camp meets its charismatic leader, the prophet, his four female camp leaders, with whom he is having sex, and about a dozen twelve and thirteen year old girls with whom he may be having sex. Van Veeteren learns that the cult leader has ordered all the females, young and old not to speak to anyone. Soon the woman calls again and tells the police where to find the body of one of the camp girls. The girl is naked, raped, strangled, and dead. How did she know?

Then the body of a second camper is found in the same condition, and the cult leader disappears. The police are stymied by the refusal of the women to talk. But then Van Veeteren has an intuition and everything becomes clear.

As in most Swedish novels the names of the characters and place names are unlike those in America and Britain. They are often filled with double vowels – such as Haaldam and Lauremaa - and seem unpronounceable, and difficult to remember. This problem also existed with the famed Stieg Larsson trilogy, but didn't stop them from becoming world-wide best-sellers and provoking interest in other Swedish crime novels. Perhaps they found the seemingly foreign elements interesting and new. Be this as it may, readers will be drawn into the mystery in this book and will enjoy it.

• Misterioso, by Arne Dahl.
  After successfully - but bloodily - dismantling a complicated hostage situation at a bank in the suburbs of Stockholm, Detective Paul Hjelm is faced with the requisite investigation by Internal Affairs.
  
  
• DeKok and the Geese of Death, by A. C. Baantjer.
  A serial killer is on the loose, but instead of hunting down the killer, seasoned Detective DeKok has been assigned to investigate the suspicious death of a gaggle of geese! As events unfold, DeKok finds that the death of the geese is only the tip of a diabolic mystery that will take all his skill to decipher.