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. 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).