DeKok and the Immortal Death (1998) by A.C. Baantjer

Today, September 16, 2023, marks what would have been the 100th birthday of A.C. Baantjer. A former Amsterdam police inspector and part of de moordbrigade (the homicide squad) who worked from 1955 until his retirement in 1983 in the red light district at the illustrious, sometimes notorious, Warmoesstraat police station – while nursing an urge to write and tell stories. A talent that emerged in the administrative side of police work as he had to write reams of police reports, but a police report only allowed him to write down the facts without any room for the human and emotional element ("so I am a writer out of frustration"). After a failed attempt in the late 1950s and winning a short story contest in the early '60s, Baantjer properly debuted under his own name with Een strop voor Bobby (A Noose for Bobby, 1964). A novel starring the quickly abandoned character of Inspector Albert Versteegh. Baantjer replaced him with a character who made a one-page appearance in A Noose for Bobby and struck the mother lode.

Inspectors Jurriaan de Cock and Dick Vledder appeared in a series of seventy novels that were published between 1965 and 2008, which sold millions of copies and even enjoyed a small measure of international success.

Regrettably, the thoughtless, dumb down English translations altered and added to the original texts. A notable change is that the name of De Cock was changed into DeKok, which perhaps makes sense to non-Dutch readers, but De Cock always spells out his name (“met cee-oo-cee-kaa”) because DeKok ("with kay-oh-kay") is the most common spelling of the name ("there are many Kok's, De Kok's, Cocq's en Cocky's..."). So there's no reason for DeKok to spell out his name to all the Dutch characters in the English translations. De Kock would have been a better compromise, but, since this blog drones on, and on, to an international, English-speaking audience, I'll try to keep things consistent and simply go with DeKok. I needed to get that out of the way, before continuing.

Upon his retirement from the Amsterdam police, Baantjer had already become the bestselling crime novelist in the Netherlands with over one-and-a-half million copies sold. So the books had always been popular that had attracted a loyal readership over the decades, but the series exploded in popularity, becoming mainstream hot, in 1995 when the TV-series Baantjer debuted on RTL4 – spanning 11 seasons and 123 episodes. A series based on the characters rather than the novels, but proved to be so incredibly popular, even reruns drew an audience of millions. It turned "Baantjer" into a brand and cash cow still being milked to this day.

So the centenary of what would have been Baantjer's 100th birthday is marked with two publications, Uit de verhoorkamer: belevenissen van rechercheur Baantjer van Bureau Warmoesstraat (From the Interrogation Room: Experiences of Inspector Baantjer of Bureau Warmoesstraat, 2023) and P. Dieudonné's Leven en werk van rechercheur De Cock (Live and Work of Inspector DeKok, 2023). The former is a collection of anecdotes and the latter a biography of DeKok. A good excuse to finally return to the series that formally introduced and hooked me on the detective story. Not Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie, but Baantjer and DeKok. However, I first needed to revisit one, or two, of the original novels because it has been a while. I wanted to begin with a title from that comfy period of the late '90s and early '00s. Looking at that period in the series, only one title stands out as imminently suitable for the occasion.

De Cock en de onsterfelijke dood (DeKok and the Immortal Death, 1998) is the fiftieth entry in the series and begins at the end of the evening shift when a pleasant conversation between DeKok and Vledder is interrupted by a knock on their office door – a man with a limp enters. The man introduces himself as Aard van de Koperberg and has come to report to file a missing person's report. Alida van Boskoop is a palmist who relieved him of his "hellish pains" and asked her to marry him, but her three daughters, Angela, Beatrijs and Christina, objected to marriage plan. Now the palmist has disappeared ("...just wiped off the face of the earth"). Angela has told him her mother has gone to France to reflect, but Van de Koperberg believes her own daughters murdered her and done away with the body. A background check on the supposed victim reveals Alida van Boskoop is somewhat of a character. She has called herself in the media Hippocratine, "a sort of female equivalent of Hippocrates," who claims her powers come directly from God. What's more, Alida says she's immortal as God personally ordered her to live forever to bear witness to him for eternity. But in the police archives, there's a record showing she had been prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license. Not to mention financially exploiting an elderly, dying lady with the promise of curing her aggressive cancer. Things only get stranger...

Beatrijs and Christina don't agree with their older sister, "she has her own views," who tell DeKok and Vledder that their mother is not on holiday in France. She has passed away, but not in the traditional way mere mortals die. Alida van Boskoop has been "temporarily recalled" to heaven ("Not forever. Hippocratine is not dead. Her soul has gone to heaven for a short visit to heaven. She will return in all her glory").

Needless to say, the reported immortality of Alida van Boskoop is not as cracked up as it's supposed to be. Solving the problem of the missing palmist only lead to the much more serious, darker problem of murder in which all the traces and potential evidence had been obliterated. Vledder sighs, "why do people always come to us with such miserable cases? Why not an ordinary, homely murder with a nice, prestine corpse and a yes-nodding killer within reach?" DeKok and Vledder don't have to wait too long to be confronted with a fresh, undisturbed crime scene as one of the three daughters, "clad in the beautiful, blood-red robe with the signs of the zodiac," is found dead in the consultation room – hanging from "an expertly-knotted noose." DeKok is an old hand and immediately recognizes the tell-tale signs of murder camouflaged as suicide. So now they have to pick around an abundance of motives and potential suspects to find a very determined murderer. Such as the three ex-husbands of Angela, Beatrijs and Christina who all blame their mother for wrecking their marriages. DeKok and Vledder have their work cut out for them, but did it all stand up to memory?

First of all, rereading DeKok and the Immortal Death was a quick, fun and nostalgic trip down memory lane and a reminder this series gained its popularity from its main characters and storytelling. Not meticulous, intricately constructed puzzle plots or adherence to the principle of fair play. There are exceptions, of course, but the reason for picking up these books is simply to tag along with DeKok and Vledder tailing a trail of strange, sometimes downright bizarre or even grotesque murders through the streets of Amsterdam until the time arrives to ensnare the murderer – which is usually done by baiting a trap. It's a formula Baantjer perfected over the years and proved to be very successful. Baantjer did it very well as the years away from this series simply disappeared after reading the first page or two. Baantjer, DeKok and Vledder can be compared to Rex Stout, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin in that regard. You never feel you have been away from Wolfe's brownstone or DeKok's Bureau Warmoesstraat for very long, when it has been years. A decade even! So it's regrettably that plotting here is threadbare and not something I find particular satisfying these days. There are no clues, some information is withheld and the best you can do make an educated guess about the who and why. Which is honestly not too difficult to do as all you have to do is (ROT13: whfg cvpx gur vapbafcvphbhf, yrnfg-yvxryl-fhfcrpg ba gur fvqryvar jvgu n fgebatyl vzcyvrq zbgvir), but a liberal dose of nostalgia helped alleviate those, what I consider now to be, shortcomings.

So a very fun, long overdue trip down memory lane and intend to do one more before the end of the year. I'm leaning at the moment towards De Cock en de treurende kater (DeKok and the Sorrowing Tomcat, 1969) for obvious reasons, but nothing on this blog is ever set in stone.