{"id":707,"date":"2012-05-01T08:52:46","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T15:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=707"},"modified":"2012-05-01T08:52:46","modified_gmt":"2012-05-01T15:52:46","slug":"a-quiet-thoughtful-murder-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=707","title":{"rendered":"A quiet, thoughtful murder mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Moyer travels a lot physically, and when he\u2019s staying home, he travels through reading. Here he travels through literature to Sweden and reviews a book by one of that country\u2019s leading writers of mysteries.<\/p>\n

By Robert Moyer<\/p>\n

INSPECTOR AND SILENCE. By Hakan Nesser. Pantheon. 287 pages. $24.95<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0Some things just don\u2019t translate.\u00a0Take, for instance, the Swedish names in Hakan Nesser\u2019s latest mystery to make it into English \u2013 Maalvoot, Rooth, Munster, Kluuge, Malijsen, Sorbinowo and, of course, Van Veeteren, the chief inspector protagonist of this series.\u00a0The book must be at least a page longer just from the names.<\/p>\n

The Inspector himself doesn\u2019t translate all that well; he has a taste for obscure art films, a dark beer before bed, and food far from the fare we usually find in a police procedural \u2013 pate, sole, and figs in cognac.\u00a0Just a few weeks from vacation, and not that much further from retirement, the Inspector moves at, to say the least, a modest pace.\u00a0He does have, however, one trait that ties him directly to the talented detectives we have come to know in the genre \u2013 intuition. \u00a0Reason\u2019s elder sister, he calls it.\u00a0He has it, he trusts it, and he uses it.<\/p>\n

As he debates his departure from the force, a police chief in the provinces calls him to ask a favor.\u00a0A girl may or may not have been murdered; an anonymous call claims so, but no body has turned up.\u00a0That is, until shortly after the Inspector arrives on the scene.\u00a0A young girl at a summer camp conducted by an unusual cult that celebrates nakedness and God is found dead near the camp.\u00a0The cult members, all women, keep their silence and create obstacles for the Inspector and his comrades.\u00a0As the body count increases, so does their complicity in protecting the cult leader, the most likely suspect.<\/p>\n

No car chases, or frantic cell phone calls here in the country of landlines, faxes, and country lanes.\u00a0The drama unfolds in the internal dialogue as the inspector teases out bits of information through his clever interrogation.\u00a0He even takes a rowboat out on the lake (it\u2019s the hottest summer\u00a0in history) to think things over, and cancels an evening interview to have \u201danother hour with a cheese board\u201d and the evening papers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But he doesn\u2019t stop.\u00a0A glimmer of an idea in one spot leads him to a slightly more promising spot where a \u201ctiny pulse\u201d of emotion puts him on the trail of\u00a0a \u201cstupid\u201d mistake that the whole case depended upon. As the bodies accumulate, so do the facts that lead him to the door of the killer.<\/p>\n

They also lead him to a decision at the end of the case about his vacation and his retirement.\u00a0He takes his time as usual; he reads the paper before he takes the next step in his life, on the last page of the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Moyer travels a lot physically, and when he\u2019s staying home, he travels through reading. Here he travels through literature to Sweden and reviews a book by one of that country\u2019s leading writers of mysteries. By Robert Moyer INSPECTOR AND SILENCE. By Hakan Nesser. Pantheon. 287 pages. $24.95 \u00a0Some things just don\u2019t translate.\u00a0Take, for instance, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[244,27,53,245],"class_list":["post-707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mysteries","tag-hakan-nesser","tag-mystery","tag-robert-moyer","tag-sweden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=707"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":710,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions\/710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}