Van Veteeren

The latest instalment in Arrow’s Nordic Noir series introduces us to ace detective Van Veeteren, who, recently having retired, opens a second hand bookshop for hobby's sake. However, he can’t quite give up on playing sleuth.

Based on the best-selling series of novels by Swedish novelist Hakan Nesser, Sven Wollter takes on the part of Van Veeteren, an experienced and matchstick toting detective who’s divorced, cynical, grumpy and has plenty of issues to deal with… but possesses a heart of gold despite coming across as a little rough.

Set in the fictitious North European city of Maardam, our detective still drops in and out of the former workplace to offer expertise advice, and take his two crime squad protégés, Münster (Thomas Hanzon), and Moreno (Eva Rexed) under his wing.

This special DVD box set release contains three stories that are cleverly constructed, and gripping indeed!

BORKMAN’S POINT
Just as Van Veeteren is about to make his dream of running a quaint little bookshop reality, life has other plans for him. His son Eric (Josef Säterhagen) is doing time in the slammer for falling foul of the law. As the prison psychiatrist observes, Eric took the criminal route to catch daddy’s attention, with whom he has a strained relationship. He is on probation for a few weeks before he has to return for the remainder of his sentence. As if it weren’t worrying enough for dad, two male bodies are found in quick succession, decapitated! When his former colleagues seem to jump to conclusions too quickly, our literary detective decides to jump in to provide his own theories. The matching MO brings the investigating teams of Maardam and Kaalbringen together. As the crime squad digs deeper, they find out that the actual motive for the killings might lie in the past, and that the two murdered men, despite their seemingly different backgrounds, were connected. Further investigations reveal that a third man was linked to the two victims, but the investigating team can’t decide whether the man is the prime suspect, or whether he could be a possible third victim…

MÜNSTER’S CASE
Van Veeteren takes a step back in this episode, while his protégé Münster is at the forefront when he gets assigned to a case more complex then everyone assumed. When the body of a wealthy wine merchant is discovered on a beach, with multiple stab wounds to his body, the police fear a media frenzy. The dead man’s former business partner, an alcoholic with a bad temper, is quickly arrested in the face of damning evidence. However, Münster, who just like Van Veeteren has serious private issues to deal with, remains unconvinced that the arrested man is the killer and continues to find the truth. This angers his superiors and he’s taken off the case - of course, that doesn’t stop him from teaming up with Van Veeteren to bring the real culprit to justice. Easier said than done, especially when the two detectives discover a dark and disturbing secret in the dead man’s family…

MORENO AND THE SILENCE
Not to be outdone, female detective Moreno also gets her own case to crack in this third episode (which is the best of the three, tough they’re all good). Fast paced and with more action than in the other two, the suspense doesn’t ease up for even a minute. When Moreno receives a desperate call from a girl who claims to have been abducted and is about to get killed, it’s a race against time to find and save her. Unfortunately, the crime squad doesn’t make it on time. Worse to come, they discover the body of another murdered girl nearby the crime scene, who seems to have been abducted and killed a few weeks prior. The investigation points towards a sinister church cult (aren’t religious cults always sinister?), with the killings carried out to punish those having turned their backs on their religious community. Desperately trying to prevent further ritual killings, Moreno and her team have a hard time cracking the case, what with church members being uncooperative and brain-washed, and the leader of the flock being a mind-controlling individual. Time for Moreno to ask Van Veteeren for help!