Håkan Nesser (born 21 February 1950) is a Swedish author and teacher who mainly writes crime fiction.

[5] On June 14, 2024, Håkan Nesser was sentenced by the Svea Court of Appeal to one year and six months in prison for three counts of aggravated tax evasion.

[8] A recurring main character is named Van Veeteren, a detective in the early novels and later the owner of an antique books shop.

Barbarotti is a more upbeat character than Van Veeteren and the books are firmly set in Sweden, although the town of Kymlinge is fictitious and named after an "abandoned tube station" in Stockholm.

In August 2011 he hinted on his own site that a future book (which became The Living and the Dead in Winsford) would take place in the "county of Somerset".