Van Veeteren
Van Veeteren is a fictional retired Detective Chief Inspector and the main character in a series of ten novels by Håkan Nesser, of which nine have been filmed. In the films, Van Veeteren is portrayed by Sven Wollter.[1]
The stage
The novels take place in a fictional town called Maardam, situated somewhere in a northern European country resembling the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Poland. Maardam has around 300 000 inhabitants (according to the first novel, The Mind's Eye).
The person
- The main character, Van Veeteren, is in his sixties. In the first five novels he is still a Detective Chief Inspector; in the last five novels he is retired, but sometimes he leaves his antiquarian book store to help out with investigations. In his youth, he was a student at the university of Maardam. Van Veeteren is a bit grumpy and cynical, enjoys dark beer and chess. He has two children, Erich and Jess. He is divorced, but meets a new woman, Ulrike Fremdli, during the series. Van Veeteren is very intuitive when it comes to reading people. He has only one unsolved case in his résumé, The Case G.