In an interview on Nordic Crime Fiction

Does the Nesser have that bleakness too?

Well, he does but this one, The Mind’s Eye, is much lighter. It’s also Swedish but the central character, another cop, Van Veeteren, is grumpy but has a great sense of humour so the book is full of jokes, one-liners. There is a sense of fun and play in Nesser. This book was the third one of his to be translated into English and although he’s a Swede his books aren’t set in any European country. It’s a fictitious place that’s never named. It’s no specific place and you start off kind of thinking it’s Holland but then it isn’t. This is always the question – where is Nesserland. This one starts with someone stumbling into the bathroom with a very bad hangover and finding his wife dead. He has no memory of attacking her, can’t remember anything.

But he assumes he did attack her?

He and everybody else. But this being Sweden, or wherever it is, he isn’t executed or anything, he’s sent to a psychiatric hospital and his memory starts to come back. Van Veeteren, of course, is convinced the husband didn’t do it. There’s this sense always that the past is affecting the present. He’s good on writing children, Nesser. He’s always very good on kids and teachers and schools. There is often a school in his books.

Is there a kind of moral point?

All crime fiction is moral in a sense. Apart from Ripley, I suppose, because he’s the murderer. But usually you get some sort of resolution. In that framework the thing is that you can’t get away with murder.