As the best products reserved for domestic consumption, the Swedish literature Hakan nesser It was devoured by the readers of its country. It was reserved for export like the greats of the scandinavian noir to other names with more commercial pull. Or at least better sellers for connecting more with a preconceived setting. Something like the pizzas they really eat in Italy and the ones you can find on telepizza.
But neither could Nesser always go undercover and little by little a police point has been discovered in his series that has little to do with supposed geographic labels but rather with a taste for investigation more seen in other latitudes.
And it is that Nesser seems possessed by the spirit of Camilleri moving uncomfortably through the northernmost Europe, denying even more the social specters that tend to paint that acidic, corrosive black genre of the southernmost idiosyncrasy. Interest-laden crimes, debts that are paid at prices set in black markets.
Much remains to be known about Nesser. Because in addition to the noir genre, there are also interesting forays into more existentialist stories. We will discover how much this unusual Swedish author offers us…
Top 3 Recommended Hakan Nesser Novels
root of evil
Barbarotti returns with more intensity if possible. Because Nesser is gaining more enthusiasm for the popular noir genre and he gives himself deeply to that of narrating wrongdoings of the Nordic underworlds, which are in every corner. The thing is that an author like Nesser, seasoned in many other literary battles, brings that I don't know what else. It is not just advancing in the plot with Inspector Barbarotti. Because there is always something else that powerfully demands our attention in each scene. Narrative magnetism made suspense…
Brittany, 2002. Six Swedish tourists meet by chance during the summer. Two couples and two singles with little in common, but the relaxed atmosphere is conducive to spending time together under the scorching sun. Five years later, the protagonists of those happy holidays begin to be killed one by one. Before, however, the culprit has warned Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti by letter: "I am going to kill Erick Bergman."
The shrewd policeman will take on a case that will take him almost to the limit. What relationship exists between Gunnar and the killer? And, most importantly, what really happened on that beach? If he wants to arrest the culprit, Barbarotti, he must hurry, the race against the clock has begun and the murderer has no intention of stopping writing his macabre letters.
The darkest night
A few days before Christmas, the entire Hermansson family comes together to celebrate XNUMX years of Karl-Erik, a commendable father and retired teacher, and XNUMX of Ebba, his favorite daughter. A few hours later, there are two inexplicable disappearances: first, Robert, the black sheep of the family; the next day Henrik, Ebba's eldest son, who disappears in the middle of the night without a trace.
Gunnar Barbarotti, an Italian-Swedish-born inspector working for the Kymlinge police force who was preparing for the hateful prospect of a Christmas with his ex-wife and ex-in-laws, will take over the case. The investigations, however, seem not to advance. Is there a connection between the two cases? Obsessed with finding the truth, it will take time, perseverance and the help of destiny for the investigations to take a precise direction and find the culprit before the case is buried by oblivion.
The two lives of Mr. Roos
Existential dichotomies are something recurring and very juicy in literature. From Dorian Gray to Dr. Jekyll to more mundane transformations of popular literature and film. The point is that the issue addresses all our contradictions: what we are and what we would like to become; what we have and what we would like to get...
That space is where a story like this moves, in which turning points, changes and dilemmas are the order of the day to transform the lives of its characters into a suspense that also reaches the reader in tune with the concerns. of one of its protagonists. Third installment of Inspector Barbarotti.
At fifty-nine years old, Valdemar Roos is tired of life: he hates his job, he barely talks to his wife, his son ignores him and he doesn't get along with his two stepdaughters. But one day, luck knocks on his door: the number he plays every week in the lottery, the same one his father played all his life, is the winner, which gives him the opportunity to win. start again.
Without sharing it with anyone, he quits his job and buys a small cabin in the remote Swedish countryside. Every day he travels to his private oasis and returns every night to his orderly, boring life. For the first time in a long time, Valdemar is happy. However, the arrival of a mysterious young woman is about to change his days forever.
Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti has suffered a domestic accident and, at the hospital, one of the nurses asks him for advice since her husband, Valdemar Ross, has disappeared without a trace. Barbarotti does not seem to be very interested in the subject, until a body appears near Mr. Ross's cabin, which automatically makes him the prime suspect in a murder.
Other recommended books by Hakan Nesser…
The rough network
In the city of Maardam, a gray and damp town somewhere in northern Europe, the surly and moody Inspector Van Veeteren leads a team of policemen with whom things are not always easy. It does not seem, however, that the case before them is too complicated: Eva Ringmar has been found murdered in the bathtub of her house and her husband, the high school teacher Janek Mattias Mitter, having been drinking the night before, is unable to remember whether or not he committed the crime.
But what they initially envisioned as a routine investigation will take an unexpected turn and become a much more complex problem than they imagined. The intuitive Van Veeteren must put aside his personal problems and investigate the past of the marriage to solve the mystery that surrounds them.
Kim Novak Never Bathed In Lake Gennesaret
Nobody bathes twice in the same river. The same water can never coincide on the same body. It is not just a question of the changing river ... The opportunity, the immortality of the moment in memory, the impertinent youthful idea that time and the river will always be available ...
The author brilliantly portrays the experiences of an adolescent in his passage to adulthood, from sexual awakening to the close encounter with death, while reflecting in detail a vital period in the construction of the collective imagination of an entire generation.
Beyond the initiation experience, nesser strives to recreate the perspective of the protagonist, rescuing moments of true complicity with him and his small universe in which the most naive humor, the mystery and the harshness of the events that changed the life of this boy forever: the terrifying.
