Product Description
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’s more, the girl’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.
Reviews/Praise
—The New York Times
“The nuanced humanity and wit of this elegantly penned mystery . . . visits the darkness with appropriate gravity but doesn’t wallow in it—all the while managing to entertain.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“The fashion for imported crime fiction is still booming with the Swede Håkan Nesser one of its most successful models.”
—Literary Review
“A satisfying novel from a rising Swedish star . . . Van Veeteren [the detective], disengaged, thinking of retirement and wonderfully enigmatic, makes an enjoyable change from all those fictional police men who persist in taking their work home with disastrous consequences, and the slow pace—there’s more introspection here than action—results in an intense read.”
—Guardian Review
“The atmosphere of the small town, the mysterious fringes of the forest full of aspens and blueberries, are evocatively drawn. So is that particular contribution of Sweden to crime fiction: the contrast between . . . the light summer nights and metaphorical darkness . . . The clarity of Nesser’s vision, the inner problems of good and evil with which Van Veeteren struggles, recall the films of Bergman.”
—The Independent
“The novel is as much about his [Detective Van Veeteran] thought processes and private pleasures as it is about a murder enquiry. The result is wry, thought provoking and often surprisingly funny.”
—The Spectator
“Håkan Nesser’s The Inspector And Silence (Mantle) has a pervading sense of calm and introspection thanks to its protagonist, Ch Insp Van Veeteren, nearing retirement and more interested in his next glass of wine than exhausting himself on a case. He’s tested, though, when members of a religious sect refuse to help as their young female initiates start being picked off by a rapist and murderer. Nesser works the slow pace skillfully and Van Veeteren is an appealing companion.”
—Metro Crime Books of the Year
