Håkan Nesser (born February 21, 1950) is one of Sweden’s most successful authors, and has written a number of successful novels, mostly crime fiction. He has won Best Swedish Crime Novel Award three times – which is quite remarkable – and his novel Carambole won the Glass Key award in 2000. His books have been translated from Swedish into 9 languages.

Hakan Nesser has published 20 books in Swedish. Five of them have so far been translated to English. They are Borkmann’s Point (2006), The Return (2007), The Mind’s Eye (2008), Woman with Birthmark (2009), and The Inspector and Silence (2010). All of these are books in the series about Van Veeteren. The series about Van Veeteren consists of 10 books (in Swedish), just like Sjöwall & Wahlöö’s famous series about Martin Beck did.

With his 2006 crime novel Människa utan hund (Human without Dog) Nesser introduced a new main character, Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti, a Swedish police inspector of Italian descent. He has remained the main ”hero” in Nesser’s crime books since then.