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BOOK REVIEW: |
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Mind’s Eye marks the latest Inspector Van Veeteren book to be translated into English from the original Swedish. Van Veeterman is approaching retirement, but both his gruffness and intellect are as sharp as ever. Why should he, then, be attracted to a case that seems to be open and shut, that of a man, a history and philosophy teacher named Janak Mattias Mitter, who forces the door of his bathroom open, to discover his wife (also a teacher, at the same school) face down, dead by having been drowned in the bathtub? Mitter obviously is the best and apparently only likely candidate to have committed the murder/ They both had been alone the night before, as far as Mitter can remember, had drunk several bottles of wine between them, ate dinner, had sex, and then...well, that’s the problem. Janek claims he has no memory of anything that happened after the sex, up until he finds his wife dead.
But, of course, that’s obviously a ridiculous story he’s made up - how can one forget murdering his wife of three months? And, there’s the bit about Janek admitting to the police that he cleaned the apartment and did the laundry before he called them to report the death. That, alone, amounts to hanging a sign around your neck that reads: "Guilty!" in bright red letters. Even his lawyer, Ruger, whose son had once been taught by Mitter, can’t help but have his doubts. When Janek tells Ruger he didn’t kill his wife Eva Ringmar, Ruger says: "No, at least you don’t think you did."
Inspector Van Veeteren, despite evidence that seems to be incontrovertible as to Mitter’s guilt, has an uncanny ability at playing his hunches about a person’s guilt or innocence. Something just doesn’t seem right to him, and though he is sure Mitter will be found guilty, Van Veeteren believes that someone else killed Mitter’s wife. Mitter’s trial goes bad for him and he’s convicted and put in an insane asylum, but Van Veeteren’s investigation goes on, and he and his fellow cops interrogate the people whose names that Jarek wrote on a list, as well as the teachers and other personnel of the Bunge High School in Maardam where he and Eva had taught.
During a brief moment of unmedicated clarity, due to a nurse’s accidently giving Mitter a sugar pill instead of his usual drugs, he remembers who had also been at his apartment the night his wife died, writes the name in a Bible, and writes a letter to the person. Shortly after this, Mitter himself is murdered, the killer escaping out of his window. Van Veeteren’s investigation takes on a new urgency, and he wonders if the murderer had killed even more people in the past.
The interrogations produce dead ends, and Inspector Van Veeteren considers quitting the case and retiring to Australia. Another body is added to the murderer’s list: that of Elizabeth Karen Hennan, found in a park by "an early morning riser taking his dog for a walk." Will Van Veeteren be able to see the patterns, and catch the killer before he strikes again, or the self-imposed deadline of Wednesday arrives, and the inspector leaves for Australia?
Mind’s Eye is an intelligent, suspenseful thriller that’ll have you guessing until the very end about who the killer is, and will keep you reading late into the night. Inspector Van Veeteren is generally right in nineteen out of twenty cases, but this case increasingly seems to be one that will get the better of him. It’s a novel that will haunt you and will make you look forward to reading more adventures of Van Veeteren. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who loves great page-turning mysteries.
REVIEWED BY DOUGLAS R. COBB
DO NOT REPRINT WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE REVIEWER, DOUGLAS R. COBB
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