Inspector Van Veeteren is the main character in ten of Håkan Nesser’s award-winning crime novels, five of which have appeared in English. The novels are set in the fictional city of Maardam, in an unnamed northern European country. In this latest outing Van Veeteren’s plan to retire from police work and take up bookselling is put on hold when a plea for help from a neighbouring region leads him to investigate a sinister religious cult, one of whose members has been reported missing. Van Veeteren is a reluctant and sometimes cynical genius ‘destined’, in the opinion of Morse’s creator Colin Dexter, ‘for a place amongst the great European detectives.’

Pan Books | Paperback 288 pp. |ISBN: 9780330512503