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    The Inspector and Silence: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery
    The Inspector and Silence: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery
    The Inspector and Silence: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Inspector and Silence: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery

    Written by Håkan Nesser

    Narrated by Simon Vance

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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. What#8217;s more, the girl#8217;s murder was tipped off by an unidentified woman, whose role becomes doubly perplexing as a string of increasingly horrifying new crimes defies everything the police thought they knew about the case and its sequence of events.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateJun 14, 2011
    ISBN9781611742701
    The Inspector and Silence: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery
    Author

    Håkan Nesser

    Håkan Nesser is one of Sweden’s most popular crime writers, receiving numerous awards for his novels featuring Inspector Van Veeteren, including the European Crime Fiction Star Award (Ripper Award) 2010/11, the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Prize (three times) and Scandinavia's Glass Key Award. The Van Veeteren series is published in over twenty-five countries and has sold over ten million copies worldwide. Håkan Nesser lives in Gotland with his wife and spends part of each year in the UK. In addition to the popular Van Veeteren series, his other books include the psychological thriller The Living and the Dead in Winsford and The Barbarotti series.

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    Reviews for The Inspector and Silence

    4/5

    19 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The Inspector and Silence takes place with Inspector Van Veeteren contemplating peaceful retirement and instead getting drawn into a particularly brutal murder investigation involving young girls at a religious retreat known as the Pure Life. Oscar Yellineck, leader of the cult, is a nasty piece of work who refuses to admit any girls are even missing from his camp, and his loyal trio of adult female followers (who bring to mind the Weird Sisters) are hardly any more-- and possibly less-- sympathetic. Located in rural Sweden, there are few witnesses and few clues, an AWOL police chief who has left a rookie in charge, and very little for Van Veeteren, who is out of his usual territory, to work with.In the midst of what is an admittedly very glum set-up, we have Van Veeteren's delightfully quirky personality and biting wit, which often erupts at the most inopportune moments. He has all the well-known cop vices-- smoking, drinking-- and partakes heartily as the investigation spins its wheels. He broods, he snaps at people (fellow cops, witnesses, suspects), and is a curmudgeon's delight. He's not lovable, he's not a renagade, he's not a forensic whiz: he's a good, old-fashioned, think-it-through and follow-the-clues instinctive cop. And that's what makes this a great detective story: it's not trying to fit into the niche of the technological craze, the young and sexy detective craze, the renegade cop craze, etc. It knows what it is and goes with it, and it does it well.Much applause to the supporting cast, too. For a fairly short novel, the secondary characters are fairly well fleshed-out and developed, personalities in their own rights. Van Veeteren carries the day, but coming along behind him is a terrific group of secondary characters who snap and snarl at each other in the unseasonable heat, or are lost in youthful hopes and dreams. Their interactions are terrific.The mystery, as noted above, is of the old-fashioned gumshoe kind. No one's going to be sitting in a CSI lab yelling "volia!" as DNA saves the day. Rather, the puzzles slowly assembles itself. Suspicions shift, clues build, small statements lead to great revelations. If you enjoy a mystery of this type, then, by all means, don't let this one pass you by. It may not have the urban flair and flashiness of some more recent entries from Sweden, but it doesn't need them; it's got character and brains, and plenty of them. And that's all it needs, it would seem, for Hakan Nesser to write a good mystery.
    • 3/5
      Not my favorite and difficult to understand how the almost magic clue in the end.
    • 3/5
      Inspector Van Veeteren’s dreams of retirement are interrupted by a series of brutal rape-murders of adolescent girls from the summer camp of the ‘Pure Life’ Christian sect. The head of the Pure Life sect vanishes on the night of the second murder and the investigation is brought to a halt when the remaining summer camp attendees and leaders refuse to say a word to the investigating officers. I do usually enjoy the Van Veeteren mysteries but this one moved at a pretty slow pace, mostly because of that stubborn silence of key witnesses, and found the resolution of the mystery too dependent on chance to make a good detective story.
    • 4/5
      A well-written but unexceptional Scandi mystery, except that Van Vetteran keeps thinking about retirement, and he also keeps thinking about what the goings-on would sound like in a novel. Right.
    • 4/5
      The Inspector and Silence by Haken NesserThis was the first book I had read by Hakan Nesser but it is not the last by far. His stream-lined style of writing draws the reader in very quickly and takes you along for an exhilarating ride.This story starts with Chief Inspector Van Veeteren who does not want to go away with his ex-wife, children and grandchildren; so quickly comes up with the excuse that he has already booked a trip to Crete for the same time. He gets assigned to a small case of a missing 13 year old girl from a mysterious Pure Life Camp. His chief of police assigns Van Veeteren as a consultant to another police force in a different town. Because he always solves the cases (except for one), he is expected to solve this mystery before he leaves on holiday.Nesser gets you so deeply involved and when the bodies start piling up; you are wondering how Van Veeteren will piece everything together and solve these very complex crimes. You are left speculating under the last few pages. By using his brain and deep thinking, those pieces all start to fit.I recommend this book by Hakan Nesser as a thriller you will want to read and additionally want to pick up his others.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful mystery. A phone tip comes in saying that a girl had gone missing from a local religious campground. Then another tip came in saying she was dead. The police find it hard to investigate since everyone in the camp will not say anything. Complete silence. Another girl's body is found and they won't say a thing. Van Veeteren comes to their aid and solves without their help. Great story - wonderfully told with interesting characters and great pacing.
    • 3/5
      I don't like it when the detective discovers something that isn't shared with the reader. So when Inspector Van Veeteren comes across an important clue in the telephone book, I am frustrated by the author not telling me what he saw. Then he meets with an unnamed woman who was previously married to a pedophile - clearly the murderer but since we don't know who the woman is how can we figure out who that is?!I also felt that it seemed like a lot of descriptive details went into describing Van Veeteren's food and bathing - maybe this is supposed to make him human but it was just too much detail.
    • 4/5
      not always well translated although in a way that conveys the sense that it is not an English setting. At times a little slow but still has the who dunnit factor to keep you going. I never guessed!I like the character and the way he can operate in a different way from other investigators -and the somewhat laid back feeling, after all the reason the police are involved is because someone is dead - there is not always a sense of urgency, except of course in this case when it becomes serial murder. I also like the sardonic humour and that the police are prepared to stop and enjoy their food and drink even when interviewing and investigating.
    • 4/5
      This is my first Hakkan Nesser book, but it won't be the last. I don't know about the previous novels in the series, but here Inspector Van Veeteren has an antihero aspect. Yes, he is a morose middle aged Swedish policeman, but he has dreams, and there is a bit of humor as well.
    • 4/5
      Chief Inspector Van Veeteren was feeling quite upset with his ex-wife, who had just tried to trap him into spending two weeks at some holiday cottage with their adult children and grandchildren. Taking the coward’s way out, he announced that he had already booked a trip to Crete. Of course, he had no vacation plans whatsoever. But then, driving away from their meeting he thought, “why not?! If you could redeem your sins by doing penance, it should be child’s play to conjure up a retroactive truth from a white lie.” And so Van Veeteren books a trip to Crete for August 1. Now all he has to do is find some “nice little two-week case” to fill in the time until vacation, perhaps in the country by a lake. So, when an anonymous caller repeatedly insists that a 13-year-old girl is missing from the Pure Life Camp in the idyllic Sorbinowo police district and Van Veeteren is asked to serve as a consultant, it looks like the perfect chance for the tired inspector to get away before getting away. But the Pure Life is a murky, closed sect whose leader, Oscar Yellinek, vehemently denies that any of the campers is missing and refuses to cooperate with the investigation. Van Veeteren’s intuition and instant dislike of Yellinek and his entourage fuels his determination to find satisfactory answers to the anonymous caller’s insistence that a girl is not only missing but has been murdered. Who is the caller? And who is the girl?The Inspector and Silence is the fifth book in this Swedish series by Hakan Nesser. Like his fictional Scandinavian brethren, Van Veeteren is stubborn, dedicated and irreverent. Introspective to a fault, it’s the inspector’s philosophical musings and observations that prove the attraction for this particular entry in the series. Who but Van Veeteren would consider the moral potential of “retroactive truth”? While the plot is acceptably intricate and the setting attractive, it’s the character himself that will please Van Veeteren’s fans in his latest case.Hakan Nesser’s Inspector Van Veeteren series has racked up some impressive awards, including the Swedish Crime Writer’s Academy Prize for new authors for Mind’s Eye and best novel awards for Borkmann’s Point and Woman with Birthmark.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      .This story takes place in a country I am not familiar with so some of the names and cultural traits were challenging to comprehend. However, The Inspector and Silence chronicled the efforts of an aging detective inspector trying to make sense of and solve a brutal series of murders of young girls from a summer camp in Sweden. Van Veeteren as the protaganist ponders his life and the crimes in a manner that mixes Columbo and Poiret. The plot offers twists and turns with a surprise ending that makes the book worth reading.
    • 4/5
      In some ways, I liked this one more than the previous books and in some ways I didn't. But what I really like is VV. I think his weirdness, his odd ways of figuring out/solving crimes. I'm not so much a fan of his insecurities, but those are par for the course in detective fiction. The Inspector and Silence feels like the final book in the series (it's not) and it also feels more modern than it actually is (originally published in '07). It's a good, solid book and it makes me like VV a lot, but also some of his other characters/coworkers. The plot is interesting, but I was mostly invested in how VV was going to solve everything. I like Nesser's writing and I hope they translate his newer books into English.
    • 4/5
      The Inspector and Silence takes place with Inspector Van Veeteren contemplating peaceful retirement and instead getting drawn into a particularly brutal murder investigation involving young girls at a religious retreat known as the Pure Life. Oscar Yellineck, leader of the cult, is a nasty piece of work who refuses to admit any girls are even missing from his camp, and his loyal trio of adult female followers (who bring to mind the Weird Sisters) are hardly any more-- and possibly less-- sympathetic. Located in rural Sweden, there are few witnesses and few clues, an AWOL police chief who has left a rookie in charge, and very little for Van Veeteren, who is out of his usual territory, to work with.In the midst of what is an admittedly very glum set-up, we have Van Veeteren's delightfully quirky personality and biting wit, which often erupts at the most inopportune moments. He has all the well-known cop vices-- smoking, drinking-- and partakes heartily as the investigation spins its wheels. He broods, he snaps at people (fellow cops, witnesses, suspects), and is a curmudgeon's delight. He's not lovable, he's not a renagade, he's not a forensic whiz: he's a good, old-fashioned, think-it-through and follow-the-clues instinctive cop. And that's what makes this a great detective story: it's not trying to fit into the niche of the technological craze, the young and sexy detective craze, the renegade cop craze, etc. It knows what it is and goes with it, and it does it well.Much applause to the supporting cast, too. For a fairly short novel, the secondary characters are fairly well fleshed-out and developed, personalities in their own rights. Van Veeteren carries the day, but coming along behind him is a terrific group of secondary characters who snap and snarl at each other in the unseasonable heat, or are lost in youthful hopes and dreams. Their interactions are terrific.The mystery, as noted above, is of the old-fashioned gumshoe kind. No one's going to be sitting in a CSI lab yelling "volia!" as DNA saves the day. Rather, the puzzles slowly assembles itself. Suspicions shift, clues build, small statements lead to great revelations. If you enjoy a mystery of this type, then, by all means, don't let this one pass you by. It may not have the urban flair and flashiness of some more recent entries from Sweden, but it doesn't need them; it's got character and brains, and plenty of them. And that's all it needs, it would seem, for Hakan Nesser to write a good mystery.