Despite being the first official novel in the Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren series, The Mind's Eye was not published in the UK until after outings two and three, hence many readers found it a little disconcerting to come to this first offering belatedly. Thankfully, despite having encountered Van Veeteren in a much later novel, I have the privilege of meeting the frequently irascible and perennially grouchy detective from his initial starting point. Although this first case is not the m...

This book has an intriguing start. A man wakes up from a drunken stupor to find his wife dead in the bath tub. He has no memory of the night before. He phones the police and cleans the apartment. He is suspected to be the murderer by the police and is convicted of the crime. He himself is later murdered while imprisoned. Although many people are interviewed no solid leads form because no one knows much about the murder victims. No leads at all and the book drifts from interviews of people who kn...

Three and a half stars - upgraded to fourA good Scandinavian police procedural/mystery, not at the level of Henning Mankell's Wallander novels, but this is the first book in a series, so I'll probably read another Van Veeteren and see how that goes.

Gifted Scandinavian curmudgeon depressed detective .... it's deja vu all over again. I read the imitators first; this is one of the originals. Good read.....not sure it was supposed to be funny, but I laughed quite a bit. I can see myself getting hooked on the series.

I truly love nordic noir so it is difficult for me not to adore all mysteries and crime novels that come out in this genre, however, Mind's Eye was a challenge for me. The storyline was very good, the details were excellent. I really liked the main character and would enjoy getting to know him better. What was most difficult was Hakan Nesser's writing style. It was very disjointed and scattered as though he got lost in his own thought process and didn't know where to go next. At one point his ch...

Schoolteacher Janek Mitter wakes up one morning to a crushing hangover, the realization that he's suffering a memory blackout, and the discovery that his wife of just three months, Eva, has been drowned in the bathtub behind a bolted door. There's no evidence that anyone else but the two of them was in the apartment the previous night, and so Janek, still with that gaping hole in his memory, is arrested, tried and convicted, even though he's certain he couldn't have killed his beloved Eva . . .B...

A surprisingly good and well-written murder mystery.For fans of Scandinavian crime fiction, Hakan Nesser should be on a short list of favorites. The first book in the Chief Inspector Van Veeteren series, The Mind’s Eye was first published in Sweden in 1993 as Det grovmaskiga nätet. This was good enough for Nesser to be awarded the 1993 Swedish Crime Writers' Academy Prize for new authors.Crime fiction is like a salesman - the lead detective, typically the writer’s protagonist, must sell the stor...

I have already read a stand-alone by Hakan Nesser, which I loved, but this is the first of his Chief Inspector Van Veeteren mysteries I've read.This book, the first in the series, does an excellent job of introducing the chief inspector. At first, I thought, oh no, yet another depressed Scandinavian detective? But Van Veeteren is more complex and more interesting than that. He has a sense of humor, even about himself.In this mystery, our detective seems to operate almost entirely by intuition, a...

A really good page turner with strong characterization (the protagonist Chief Inspector). Funny at some parts, too! Didn't see the end coming. I'd truly recommend this to anyone who likes crime and mystery fiction.

This was a slow starter. It seemed so predictable in the beginning it had me fooled. After 50-60 pages the story got more speed, it held my attention till the end. I'm looking forward to reading the next one in the series.

I read most of this lying flat on my back while recovering from the side effects of my 2nd Covid vaccine booster. I found Chief Inspector Von Veteeren’s quips in this standard and simple police procedural that is set in Sweden, just what I needed for the last 48 hours.

Inspector Van Veeteren“His face was crisscrossed by small blue veins, many of them burst, and his expression was reminiscent of a petrified bloodhound. The only thing that moved was the toothpick, which wandered slowly from one side of his mouth to the other. He could talk without moving his lips, read without moving his eyes, yawn without moving his mouth. He was much more of a mummy than a person made up of flesh and blood.”“But beyond doubt a very efficient police officer.”Janek Mitter marrie...

I loved Mind's Eye by Håkan Nesser, the first in the Swedish crime series featuring Inspector Van Veeteren, the grumpy, cynical, aging detective who has a stinging sense of humor. In fact, although I'm an incorrigible multi-book reader, I found myself unable to read anything else until I finished this book (a rare event that I always hope for). The character of Van Veeteren is the primary attraction but the other characters are all seamlessly drawn and the plot is well-paced and absorbing. I can...

A new author for me in the Nordic Noir genre but one who is firmly established.Very easy reading style, churned through the early pages getting into the story & the mind of the “killer” or should I say accused which isn’t much of a reveal as its covered in the synopsis.The narrative at the start I enjoyed, the characterisation of the main players not so, all a tad blank, especially the main man, Inspector Van Veeteren who we learn next to nothing about….. there’s nothing at all to get hold of. H...

This is actually the first installment in the series featuring Inspector Van Veeteren, set in Sweden, and it is a good one. I really love Nesser's books, having read the first three in the series so far (Mind's Eye, Borkmann's Point, The Return). In this debut (and you'll never believe it's the first of a series, it's that good), Van Veeteren takes the case of Janek Mitter, who wakes up one morning after a night of heavy drinking to find his wife Eva in the bathtub, dead. The only suspect is Mit...

4*I was on a cruise last year and sat with a Swedish couple for dinner one night. I mentioned that I liked to read mysteries and had read books by 2 Swedish authors, Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson. He recommended that I read books by Hakan Nesser. I am pleased that I followed his recommendation.This is book 1 in the series and I enjoyed it. It is a psychological mystery with Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren solving the mystery by deductive reasoning and following clues. There is very li...

3.5/5 stars Like I've said before - a good mystery book shouldn't be longer than 300 pages. In this case 288 was perfectly enough. I picked Mind's Eye randomly in a second hand book shop because the cover and then a description caught my eye. It being written by a Swedish author was a gigantic plus because 2018 is a year in which I'm trying to read a lot of foreign authors. Speaking of foreign, the translation for this was superb - really, really enjoyed it. As it usually goes with mystery novel...

This is the book that introduced Swedish Inspector Van Veeteren. After a drunken night of love-making, Janek Mitter awakens to find his wife drowned in the bathtub, and Mitter has absolutely no recollection of what might have happened. Van Veeteren is not completely certain that Mitter is guilty of the murder, but with the evidence stacked against him and no real defense, Mitter is convicted and sent to a mental institution.After some time in the institution, Mitter is brutally murdered, and Van...

There will be absolutely no hint of spoilers in Nesser reviews from me! I found Nesser books after running out of Karin Fossum books to read. Nesser's writing is excellent and does an unbelievable job at sucking the reader in to the twisted story being laid out. For some reason, in the majority of Scandanavian mystery writers I have found, their ability to do that is second to no other countries mystery writers. The only criticism I have is that I am not happy about with Nesser's books is that i...

I have enjoyed other Scandinavian murder mysteries so much that I was happy to discover Nesser's Inspector Van Veeteren series (of which this book is one). I've read three of his books now and there are many things about them that I don't like. For one, I was disappointed to find that Nesser's writing doesn't evoke a strong sense of place for me, which is something I have found compelling about other Scandinavian authors. I also really disliked Inspector Van Veeteren as a character; although he