“Borkman’s Point,” by Hakan Nesser, was written in 1993 but not published in English until 2006. It’s part of a series starring Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, whose popularity in Sweden rivals fellow fictional sleuths Kurt Wallander and Martin Beck. So far, five Van Veeteren books have appeared in English, the latest in 2010 (though it was originally written in 1997), and a sixth (written in 1998) is due later this year.

In this book, Van Veeteren is sent to a small town to help catch a serial murderer called The Axman, since he kills with an axe. Two murders occurred before his arrival, and one more occurs after he arrives.

It’s very much a police procedural. There isn’t much action at all. Rather, you tag along as the cops talk to people, follow clues, and discuss what they’ve got so far. They go a long time without much of any clue whatsoever.

Nesser develops his characters well, and keeps you in suspense. The murderer wasn’t at all who I thought it would be, though the idea did cross my mind once. But I was more focused on others. Nesser is great at misdirection. This was a totally satisfying plot.

The title refers to a policeman’s rule that sometimes you already have all the information you need to solve the crime, and if you keep collecting more information, it won’t help. You just have to look closely at what you’ve already got and follow your gut.

I previous read two other Van Veeteren books back-to-back, “Mind’s Eye” and “The Return,” and reviewed them together on my blog. Those were very good books, too.

Curiously, Nesser never identifies the country in which the books take place; it seems to be a made-up country in northern Europe. The setting resembles Sweden, but it’s not Sweden. The names of towns and people are mostly Dutch. As I read, I picture the Netherlands.

Five Nesser books have been translated into English, and all five feature Van Veeteren. “Borkman’s Point” was translated first, in 2006, followed by “The Return” (2007) and “Mind’s Eye” (2008). However, “Mind’s Eye” was actually written first, back in 1993.

The translating for the three books I’ve read was done by Laurie Thompson, a British academic who has translated works by a number of other prominent Swedish mystery writers, including Henning Mankell and Ake Edwardson. I came to appreciate his translations initially in the Mankell books; his name is on 10 of them now.

All of Nesser’s English publications appear under the Black Lizard imprint from Vintage Books.

Murder at the Savoy is the sixth book (of 10 total) in the Martin Beck series, by Swedes Maj Sjowal and Per Wahloo. The series has ten books in all, written from 1965-1975. While Martin Beck is the main character, he’s not a dominant lead; most of the books scatter the story among an ensemble cast.

Murder at the Savoy begins with a man walking into a dinner gathering and shooting, in the head, a powerful Swedish industrialist named Viktor Palmgren. He then escapes through a window.

The assassination occurs in the southern city of Malmo, which is home to another famous Swedish policeman, Kurt Wallender (from the series by Henning Mankell). Martin Beck, based in Stockholm, gets sent to Malmo to investigate, and he teams up with Malmo policemen to try to figure out the who and why of the murder.

They pursue threads involving Palmgren’s wife, a couple men heading up some of Palmgren’s business interests, Palmgren’s involvement in African gun-running, and other paths. In the end, it’s resolved in a way I didn’t expect, but which was somewhat anti-climactic to me.

I’ve enjoyed the Martin Beck series, but this book seemed sub-par. Even the title, Murder at the Savoy, seems like the authors weren’t really trying. I finished the book, stuck it on the shelf, and proceeded to the next book in the series, The Abominable Man.

Once again, as is their habit, the authors start with a murder. This time, it’s a hospitalized police inspector who, while in his hospital room, is brutally killed with a bayonet. The usual characters assemble to solve the mystery. The plot resolves in a much more straightforward way than Murder at the Savoy.

The murder victim is the title character, “the abominable man.” He’s a sadistic, brutal guy who trained other cops in his ways. It makes for an interesting character. But the authors didn’t really do anything with the character.  And who killed him? We never learn much about him. When a list is discovered of other police targets, Martin Beck is on the list…but we’re never told why. The killer had a motive for killing the “abominable” guy, but not for killing anyone else. There is a killing spree at the end, but again, it’s all pointless, without motive.

I didn’t like either of these books. I’ve enjoyed the previous Martin Beck books, but these two were really lame.

I just finished reading three Andrews Vachss novels back to back to back. All in the Burke series.

In “Choice of Evil” (1999), a close woman friend, Crystal Beth, is shot and killed at a gay rights parade; several other people are killed, too. Then someone starts picking off gay-bashers, lots of them. He’s quite a prolific killer…and becomes somewhat of a hero in the gay community.

Burke is hired to find this killer by some gay rights people who want to protect the guy. The ghost of Wesley, a notorious killer who was a friend of Burke, permeates the book. But Wesley’s dead…or is he? And who killed Crystal Beth, and why?

In “Dead and Gone” (2000), Burke facilitates what appears to be the trade of a boy who had been abducted from his parents years ago. But actually, it was all designed to be an assassination attempt on Burke. He ends up in the hospital with a bullet through his brain, an eye missing, and severe disfigurement. Even worse, to Burke: he watched Pansy, his dog, get killed.

Once out of the hospital, Burke strikes out to find who set him up. The quest takes him to Chicago, Oregon, New Mexico, and Florida. He meets some very interesting people along the way, including Gem, an exotic Cambodian criminal who becomes his lover. There is, of course, a final reckoning with those who set him up, and Pansy is avenged. It just takes a while.

“Pain Management” (2001) finds Burke staying in Portland with Gem. He accepts a job–to find Rosebud, a teenage girl who disappeared from her home. She appears to be a runaway. But why? Operating in Portland, without the familiar New York cast of underworld characters–Max, Michelle, the Mole, Mama, Clarence, and others–Burke is just another private investigator, and this is just another mystery plot.

Burke uses this book to preach against restrictions on industrial-strength pain medicine for terminally ill people. They end up dying in agony, when drugs were available which could have kept them comfortable in their final days. Kind of a strange cause, but there you have it.

All three of these books seemed to plod along, spending way too much time on relationships, albeit with interesting people, without moving the plot along. And he needs to get back to New York City. Which, I understand, Burke does in the next book. But for now, I’m gonna switch my reading to something else.

I loved this book. I’ve read a number of books about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and most have been very good. “The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al-Qaeda,” published in January 2011, represents extensive reporting of the whole history of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Bergen, a TV and print journalist, was the CNN producer who arranged bin Laden’s first interview with the Western press back 1997. He’s been working the story ever since.

The book covers plenty of ground which was already familiar to me from book (Thomas Ricks, Bob Woodward, Jane Mayer, and others) and other magazine and online reporting. But Bergen illuminated other aspects of the bin Laden/Al Qaeda story which I’ve not seen addressed elsewhere.

• Bergan reports on numerous Al Qaeda plots and attacks that were new to me—probably because they didn’t involve the US, and therefore received scant coverage here. Many of these plots targeted other Arab countries, like Saudi Arabia, or Europe. Al Qaeda has been far more active than I thought.
• He describes Al Qaeda as “one of the most bureaucratic terrorist organizations in history.” This was quite fascinating. Al Qaeda was sophisticated organizationally. Their bylaws covered annual budgets, salary levels, medical benefits, furniture allowances, provisions for persons with disabilities, and even vacation policies (with requests submitted at least 2.5 months in advance). Really fascinating stuff which was totally new to me.
• Bergen showed (much to my delight) how Al Qaeda was scammed several times by persons who, knowing Al Qaeda’s interest in nuclear weapons, sold them worthless information and materials (all of which we captured in Afghanistan).
• He debunks the notion that bin Laden was on dialysis. That was never the case.
• He addresses the claim, frequently heard on Fox News, that Al Qaeda is against the American way of life. Bergen documents how from the 1990s, bin Laden has consistently maintained that his beef was with American foreign policy as it related to Islamic countries (especially positioning US troops on Saudi soil, which ended in 2003). Bin Laden himself sarcastically stated, in a tape, that if he was against the Western lifestyle, why hadn’t he attacked Sweden?
• He describes bin Laden as an effective leader tactically (pulling off a single attack), but a failure strategically. He never expected us to invade Afghanistan. At the most, he expected cruise missile attacks or air strikes. While 9/11 was a spectacular success, it backfired spectacularly in that it destroyed nearly everything he had built to that point–turning millions of Muslims worldwide against him because of the killing of civilians, bringing a greater US presence in Arab countries, enhancing the relationship between the US and many Muslim countries, losing his whole infrastructure and safe haven in Afghanistan, and causing a backlash against militant extremists in some Arab countries.
• Bergen examined every piece of “evidence” linking Al Qaeda with Iraq. None of it held water. A CIA report described the relationship between Al-Qaeda and Iraq as two rival intelligence agencies, each trying to use the other to it own advantage. There was much animosity between Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden.
• Another aspect we don’t hear about: the denunciations of bin Laden by Muslim leaders around the world, particularly in recent years. Bergen spent a lot of time on this, combing through Arab publications and media. Some former close associates and mentors of bin Laden, people with solid jihadist credentials, have publicly denounced bin Laden for targeting civilians. They have called him immoral. Very strong stuff.
• He described some agreements put into place under Bush which have helped extricate us from Iraq.
• Bergen writes that “the graveyard of empires metaphor belonged in the graveyard of clichés.” He pointed out various foreign powers that had had success in Afghanistan. He also debunked the common assumption that Afghanistan is a disjointed collection of tribes. Actually, Afghanistan has been a nation since 1747—older than the United States—and Afghanis have a strong sense of nationhood. What they DON’T have is a strong central government.
• Bin Laden, from his early days in the Sudan, was obsessed with being prepared for a life on the run. Bergen, through information gleaned from bin Laden family members and others, explains how he continually prepared his family. For instance, he wouldn’t let his kids drink cold water, or use refrigeration of any kind, because if they were forced into hiding, they would be denied such creature comforts.
• In a prophetic vein, he explains evidence from videotapes from bin Laden and Zawahiri that made it clear that they weren’t living in caves.

This is a great book which will enormously enhance your understanding of the conflicts which have engulfed the US since 9/11.

I previously reviewed the book “A Renegade History of the United States,” by Thaddeus Russell, who teaches history and American studies at Occidental College. It gives an alternative, sometimes politically-incorrect, view of our history.

He starts with colonial, pre-Revolution America. My image of early America revolves around the aristocrats with their fancy clothes, high morals, and impeccable manners. But Russell focuses on the far more numerous lower classes, which included hordes of immigrants fresh off ships from Europe, forced to do whatever they could to survive in the New World.

It was a free-wheeling place, with few rules, very much an early version of the Wild West. In those days, the mid-1700s, Pennsylvania was the West. Colonial America had laws, but not many. Likewise with morals. It’s not the early America we were taught.

According to Russell:

• 40% of pregnancies in the late 18th century New England were premarital.
• Alcohol flowed in abundance, among both men and women.
• Far more women chose not to marry than at any other time in our history.
• Men and women often married, and divorced, without anything “legal” from the government.
• Among the lower classes, people of all ethnicities–including blacks and whites–mixed socially and sexually. Taverns, like brothels, were not segregated, but had all kinds of people drinking, dancing, and sleeping together.
• One-third of the adult female population was not only unmarried, but living with nonrelatives.
• In early America, urban women worked in every imaginable profession. Russell says historians estimate that up to half of all shops in early American cities were owned by women (true of 40% of the taverns in Boston during the 1760s). Many such taverns doubled as brothels.

Russell points out that the upper classes barred their “respectable” women from frequenting taverns. But in those days, most women were from the lower classes, and didn’t concern themselves with being respectable.

If American society was ever characterized as “free,” this was it—a time with few rules, moral or otherwise. There was very little government to interfere in anyone’s life.

And then came the Revolution, the war for Freedom.

After the Revolution, the upper classes began passing laws to regulate, if not reform, the immorality they so despised in the lower classes. They didn’t like all the drinking. They didn’t approve of women working—it wasn’t their place. They felt uncomfortable with blacks and whites mixing it up. And they especially didn’t like illicit sex. And so, they began legislating their morality.

The first target was illicit sex. Arrests for prostitution increased dramatically. Prostitutes or simply promiscuous women were confined in asylums until they were deemed “respectable.” Anti-vice organization targeted gambling houses, brothels, dance halls, and lower-class taverns.

In some places, women who bore children out of wedlock were forced to turn them over to the state, which officially labeled them as “illegitimate.” Welfare for unmarried mothers was discontinued, replaced by asylums for illegitimate children.

New medical literature described certain types of sexual activity, even among spouses, as deviant. Women were told they were inherently non-sexual. It became unseemly for women to run businesses and work in a “man’s” job.

Divorce became more difficult, no longer a matter between spouses. Now the government began regulating divorce. An abused wife seeking divorce had to show how attentive, obedient, and sexually faithful she had been while being victimized. A husband was deemed okay, as long as he provided economic support.

People were arrested for interracial sex, which had flourished before the Revolution, according to Russell. Brothel owners were charged with race-mixing. Post-Revolution America became more racially intolerant (England, of course, banned slavery long before we did).

Most of the Founding Fathers felt we should restrict voting and public office to landowners.

The new country became a place of regulated morality, rife with laws. As compared to the free-wheeling, almost-anything-goes life under the British.

In the process, the Founding Fathers, these firebrands for liberty and the pursuit of happiness, actually inflicted less freedom on Americans. Which is, of course, very ironic. Fight a war for freedom, and then become less free.