Münster's Case is billed as an Inspector Van Veteren mystery, but we see very little of Maardam's veteran Chief Inspector until near the end of the story. Instead, Hakan Nesser turns the investigation over to Van Veteren's colleague, Intendent Münster.
Four retirees have won a 20,000-guilder lottery--not a fortune, but worth celebrating. They get gloriously drunk at their favorite bar, two of them argue and everyone goes home. At around 2 a.m., Waldemar Leverkuhn is murdered, stabbed 28 times. It develops that another member of the quartet, Bogner, disappeared that night. Are the two events connected?
Much of the first part of the novel is concerned with the investigators trying to figure out not only who killed Leverkuhn but whether they should look for Bogner's body. Bogner and Leverkuhn are the two who had argued, giving credence to the possibility the dispute continued outside the bar.
Marie-Louise, Leverkuhn's wife, who came home late to find her husband in a veritable bloodbath, says she ran to the nearby police station, discovered it closed, then came back home to call the police. The Leverkuhns' apartment caretaker, Else Van Eck, also disappears suddenly: Is it connected to the murder? Interviews with the three grown Leverkuhn children also deepen the mystery.
Just when the reader thinks that the story is all sorted out, an unexpected snapper at the end makes one realize there were early clues to the outcome all along. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.