"Sometimes the most illogical answer turns out to be the correct one. Reality is often stranger than anything we can imagine ourselves, but I'm not the first one who has said that. It probably was Sherlock Holmes, who always had something clever to say."- Peter van Opperdoes (Een mes in de rug, 2012)
The book I alluded to in my previous post, read
on a sultry and lazy afternoon in the cool shades beneath the trees, was Een
mes in de rug (A Knife in the Back, 2012), published under the names
De Waal & Baantjer, but the series has been a solo-project of Simon de Waal
ever since Appie Baantjer passed away in late August, 2010. It's the sixth
installment of a series that began after Baantjer retired the successful
DeKok-series that ran for nearly five decades, sold millions of copies and
spawned a television series that kept millions of viewers glued to their
televisions. A decision as unpopular as Conan Doyle's
resolution to wash himself from Sherlock Holmes in the churning waters of
Reichenbach Falls, but it was also an understandable one coming from a writer
in his eighties, penning two or more books a year, who had just lost his wife –
and I thought that with the publication of Dood in gebed (Death in
Prayer, 2008) we had reached the end of an era.
But the writing bug reared its ugly head and
the itch began, and before long, he was working on a new series with his
ex-police colleague and fellow crime-writer Simon de Waal as a writing buddy.
The main characters are the old-school veteran Peter van Opperdoes and his
younger partner Jacob, who are basically thinly disguised versions of
themselves. You can find traces of them all over the characters. Peter van
Opperdoes has also lost his wife, but in the books he still talks with her and
the first part makes it clear that he's not imagining things, however, she's
only there to speak words of encouragement to her husband and not to whisper
the name of the murderer into his ear. It's very unusual to have such a
non-intrusive, supernatural entity hovering in the background of a straight-up
police procedural. Anyway, Simon de Waal worked as a rookie-cop with Baantjer
and this joint-project must have seemed like things coming full circle for
them. Writing the first few books must have been fun as Baantjer loved to leave
impossible plot-twists for De Waal to sort out. But she didn't have a sister
indeed. Good luck with that, Simon! De Waal described Baantjer as someone with
the mindset of a charming young man and acted as such, which makes me think of
Baantjer as Archie Goodwin in his eighties.
So I settled down with A Knife in the Back
(yes, yes) and expected nothing more than a charming, uncomplicated roman
policier because the first three books were kind of disappointing – with a
last-minute introduction of a culprit and a lack of fair play. They were as fun
to read as the DeKok novels, but, plot-wise, insufficient to satisfy this
spoiled brat. But A Knife in the Back was a marked improvement on its
predecessors.
The problems for Van Opperdoes and Jacob begin
when they have to go to a hotel where a guest has failed to emerge from his
room, but the foul smell of murder does not stink up the place despite the
presence of a body and the medical examiner seems to agree. Cause of death:
heart failure. However, the manager made sure that the detectives did not leave
the building without a problem and notified them that the body and the man who
had rented the room were not one and the same person. With suspicion on his
mind, Van Opperdoes goes over the body again and finds evidence suggesting
murder – albeit an accidental one. The old detective showed that an old fox may
lose his hair but not his cunning and prevented a murder from being filed away
as a natural death. The rest of the plot unfolds through follow-ups on witness testimonies,
credit card information and everything else that comes to the surface over the
course of a police investigation, but in the end this was more a story about
detectives than a proper detective story. Not a bad one, but still not a
genuine detective story. Still, that should take nothing away from the book for
the average reader because it’s not that kind of story and this will only
bother individuals hooked on GAD.
 |
| Baantjer & De Waal signing their second book |
De Waal is a fictioneer who dabbles in variety
of styles (police procedurals, thrillers and historical mysteries), but has yet
to write a classically styled mystery (the historical ones echoed Doyle and his
contemporaries) filled with locked rooms, clues and baffling crimes! I know it's
an unreasonable expectation, but it would be awesome if one of our top-tier crime
writers would pen an old-fashioned whodunit. Because we have to reduce the monoculture
of modern thrillers dominating the shelves of our bookstores before it kills millions
of people to keep the genre fresh, inventive and more importantly it would
make me happy.
Bibliography:
De Waal
& Baantjer series:
Een
Rus in de Jordaan (A
Russian in the Jordaan, 2009) [De Jordaan = neighborhood in Amsterdam]
Een
lijk in de kast (A
Skeleton in the Closet, 2010)
Een
dief in de nacht (Like
a Thief in the Night, 2010)
Een
schot in de roos (Hitting
the Bull's-eye, 2011)
Een
rat in de val (Caught
Like a Rat in a Trap, 2011)
Een
mes in de rug (A
Knife in the Back, 2012)
The
Historical C.J. van Ledden-Hulsebosch series:
Moord
in Tuschinski (Murder
in Tuschinski, 2002)
De
wraak van de keizer
(The Emperor's Revenge, 2003)
Spelen
met vuur (Playing
with Fire, 2004)
De
Rembrandt code (The
Rembrandt Code, 2006)
The Boks
series:
Boks en
de lege kamer (Boks
and the Empty Room, 2005)
Boks
en het verkeerde lijk
(Boks and the Wrong Corpse, 2006)
Boks
en de spoorloze getuige (Boks and the Vanished Witness; never published)
Thrillers:
Cop
vs. Killer (2005)
Pentito
(2007)
De
vijf families: Duivelspact (The Five Families: Devil’s Pact, 2011)
Wie een kuil graft... (Whoever Digs a Pit, 2011) [a twiller = twitter
novel]
The next post will be a return to our beloved Golden Age.
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