Münster's Case / Håkan Nesser

A group of old men makes a small winning with the lottery and after their celebratory bender, 72-year-old Waldemar Leverkuhn ends up dead at home in his bed with twenty-eight stab wounds. The same night one of his drinking buddies disappears, and several days later the concierge’s wife from the Leverkuhns' building is reported missing. Is someone stalking senior citizens? Are the cases even related? When Fru Leverkuhn confesses to the murder of her husband, it seems that the case is solved… or is it? Truth be told, this novel didn’t really pick up until about page 200 for me, which is a shame, because the last 100 or so pages were well worth it and the plotline is really rather clever, with the reader guessing until the last page about motives and responsible parties.

This was the first Håkan Nesser novel that I’d read. I picked it up because of my fondness for Scandinavian mystery/thrillers and the fact that it had both a “ü” and an “å” on the cover. Münster's Case is billed as an Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery, but this character only appears in this book peripherally. It’s Münster's case, after all. Nesser is a Swedish writer, but this series takes place in what appears to be the Netherlands (place names, guilders, and lots of canals hint at this), but Maardam is impossible to place on the map and there are German and Slavic names used that cloud the identity of the surroundings. I wish it had a stronger sense of place. I always like to get maps out and look at pictures of where things happen. Have to rely totally on your mind’s eye in this series, though that’s probably not a bad thing. I was also confused by the use of Swedish “fru,” “fröken” and even “salutorget,” (market square) when it was so clearly not Sweden. I wonder if this was just an artifact of the translation. The UK version of the novel was perhaps more appropriately titled The Unlucky Lottery—I think that’s a better title. I’ll probably read Nesser again, but not before I read another by Henning Mankell, who remains the true master. Which reminds me, I need to see the new PBS episodes of Wallander!

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