The coarse-meshed network

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The large-meshed net is a crime novel by the Swedish writer Håkan Nesser . It was published in 1993 and is the first novel in the ten-volume Van Veeteren series .

The original edition was published under the title Det grovmaskiga nätet in Stockholm by Bonnier . The novel meant Nesser's breakthrough as a crime writer: In the year of publication, he won the Swedish crime prize in the category Best Swedish First Novel - Bästa svenska Debut . The German edition was published for the first time in 1999 by the Munich publisher btb (Random House) .

action

Events in the early 1990s between October 5th and December 1st are described.

Part One - Sunday October 5th to Friday November 22nd

Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is investigating the murder of 38-year-old teacher Eva Ringmar, who was found drowned in the bathtub of the locked bathroom on October 5 by her 46-year-old husband Janek Mitter when he woke up that morning with a hangover. Mitter, also a teacher of history and philosophy at Bunge High School in Maardam, who has no precise memory of the previous evening, is under strong suspicion of murder, but denies the act. Van Veeteren, who was not one hundred percent convinced of Mitters guilt at the time of the interrogation, begins to doubt it more and more during the court hearing, which Mitter endures strangely uninvolved.

During a visit to Eva Ringmar's mother, Van Veeteren tells about Eva's twin brother Rolf, who emigrated to Canada at the age of 19 in order to escape the beating father. Eva moved out six months later, became a teacher and married Andreas Berger in 1981. A few years later, on June 1, 1986, their four-year-old son Willie drowned, their marriage failed and Eva spent six months in a clinic, suicidal. Van Veeteren discovers that Eva continued to have appointments with the therapist after she was discharged from the clinic, but kept a secret during the sessions that she didn't want to talk about.

Janek Mitter is sentenced to six years imprisonment for manslaughter and after a psychiatric report is admitted to an institution. When his amnesia subsides, he remembers having seen someone in the apartment that evening, notes the visitor's name in the Bible on his bedside table and writes him a note the next day. He also tries in vain to contact Van Veeteren by phone.

Part Two - Friday November 22nd to Sunday December 1st

On November 22nd, four days after Mitter's memory resumed, he was stabbed to death by an unknown person with a knife. A woman or a man disguised as a woman is suspected of the act, who entered the institution during visiting hours and then allowed himself to be locked up. Mitter previously wrote a letter and had it sent. Van Veeteren concludes that the addressee of the letter murdered both Mitter and his wife. He also suspects that Mitter sent the letter to the address of his place of work, the Bunge-Gymnasium, because there was no address or telephone book available to him in the institution, so he had to know the address from memory.

The police then tried to understand the distribution of mail at the grammar school and checked the staff to see who accepted a job there after Eva. This narrows the group of suspects to three people. During a conversation with Eva's ex-husband, Andreas Berger, he reported that she had met a stranger regularly from 1986 onwards, but had always vehemently denied this. After being released from the clinic, she began drinking and was again in another clinic until May 1987, before separating from her husband in April. Further checks of neighbors, work colleagues and acquaintances do not lead to any new findings. Van Veeteren came to the conclusion that the key to solving the two murders must lie in incidents that occurred several years ago. In the meantime, on November 30th, the body of the raped and strangled saleswoman Elisabeth is found, but apparently she has nothing to do with the case.

Third part - Sunday December 1st to Thursday December 5th

Van Veeteren interviewed an old school friend of Eva's who attended the same school with her and her twin brother Rolf. She tells of an outing with the gang in which Eva's boyfriend at the time committed suicide after breaking up with him. The suspicion is now concentrated on Carl Ferger, the caretaker of the Bunge-Gymnasium, who did not have a convincing alibi for the time of the murders of Janek Mitter and Eva Ringmar and only started working at the school at the beginning of the year. Van Veeteren goes to high school with several colleagues, but the person he is looking for has not come to work, but is on the run in his car. Thanks to the testimony of a friend of the murdered saleswoman Elisabeth, who lays another lead to the Bunge-Gymnasium, Ferger comes under the urgent suspicion of having committed this murder as well. During the escape, he thinks of three more murders that the police are not yet aware of. Twelve years ago he murdered a fau named Ellen. Finally, during the ongoing search, he is recognized by his license plate and arrested.

Van Veeteren is now certain who the arrested person is in reality and confronts him with the last three murders, as well as that of Willie, Eva's drowned son. Only when he brings Eva and Rolf's mother to the station does her son confess. It turns out that Rolf and Eva were looking for something to hold together in front of the drinking and flogging father and that they had a close relationship that eventually led to incest. Eva ended this after two to three years, but Rolf couldn't handle it and killed her friend. Thereupon Eva blackmailed him to emigrate. He kills Ellen in Toronto and then returns to Europe, where he follows Eva and kills her child to punish her. After the reconnaissance, van Veeteren takes the flight to Australia, which he booked a week in advance.

German translation

In 1999 the novel was published by btb in Munich in a translation by Gabriele Haefs , after the fourth novel in the Kommissar Van Veeteren series, Kvinna med födelsemärke (The woman with the birthmark), had been published in German the previous year . In 2006, Random House Audios in Cologne published an audio book of this, spoken by Dieter Moor ( ISBN 3866042884 ).

filming

Karlskrona, location of the film

In 2000 the novel was made into a film by the Swedish television company SVT , directed by Martin Asphaug , and broadcast in Germany on ARD . The shooting took place in Karlskrona in the Swedish province of Blekinge län . The commissioner will be played by the Swedish actor Sven Wollter in this and the following film adaptations of the Van Veeteren series .

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