Review for The Return

This story was about a thoroughly unlikable murder victim, who I failed to get any empathy for, and thus finding his killers was something of a chore for me.  I found this book to be a little bit of a struggle to read generally, it went from oddly direct dialog to irritatingly flowery prose.  Van Veeteren, the hero, is a mix of self-indulgent philosopher and inflexible pig-headed obstinance.  While some may think this would give the character depth, for me it just gave him inconsistency.

This book is a translation from the original Swedish, and it seems to me that different people were brought in to do the job, one or more for the long descriptive passages, and others to make the dialog seem more real in English.  It was like reading two different books superimposed on each other.

Often when I pick up a book in the middle of a series I find that it makes me want to go and get the others, and I will religiously read every book by that author that I can get my hands on.  Unfortunately, Van Veeteren and his crew have not given me that urge.  Perhaps I chose the wrong book with which to introduce myself to the works of Hakan Nesser.