Cool Down

I have a confession to make: when the temps start to soar and the weather gets unbearably hot, I like to pretend that I'm somewhere cold. And not just anywhere. I try to trick myself into thinking I'm in Scandinavia. In winter. So when I can't get down to IKEA, I find the next best thing is to turn up the air conditioning and curl up with some good Nordic crime fiction. Håkan Nesser is a Swedish author who sets his stories in a non-descript northern European country. In Mind's Eye, we are introduced to Inspector Van Veeteren, who has the uncanny ability to accurately assess a suspect's guilt within moments (19 times out of 20 anyway), much to the exasperation of his fellow detectives. His confidence waivers, however, when he meets a high school teacher who is accused of brutally murdering his own wife. The problem? The suspect has no memory of the night in question, and no idea that someone else is going to stop at nothing to make sure he never remembers. This is the first book in Nesser's Inspector Van Veeteren series. HM