Invitation to Murder (1953) by Ab Visser

Ab Visser was a Dutch writer, editor, critic, reviewer, poet and a tireless advocate of the Dutch detective story, who tried to position himself as the Frederic Dannay of the Low Countries, but not with the same rate of success as his American counterpart – not even remotely close. Between the late 1960s and early '80s, Visser launched two ill-fated, short-lived magazines, Pulp and Plot, that lasted only a handful of issues. During the early '60s, Visser took on the editorship of an ambitious project, "Zodiac Mysteries," which would have consisted of twelve, zodiac-themed detective novels from a dozen different writers. But for some reason, the project was abandoned after the eighth novel was published. At least we got Ton Vervoort's Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963) out of it!

Another problem is that Visser was more active as a mystery critic, editor and reviewer than writing actual mystery and detective novels. Visser wrote a couple of crime thrillers like De samenzwering (The Conspiracy, 1965), De kat en de rat (The Cat and the Rat, 1967), Het kind van de rekening (The Child Who Paid the Price, 1969) and the short story collection De chanteur (The Blackmailer, 1970). Only one true, classically-styled detective novel.

Visser submitted Uitnodiging tot moord (Invitation to Murder, 1953) to the detective story competition, organized by A.W. Bruna & Zoon, but the first prize went to, what's considered today, the first homegrown hardboiled thriller, Parels voor Nadra (Pearls for Nadra, 1953) – penned by journalist Joop van den Broek. Eline Capit came in second with De Wolven en de schapen (The Wolves and the Sheep, 1953) and was published in America two years later under the title Run from the Sheep. Third place unaccountably was awarded to Bob van Oyen's terrible Na afloop moord (Afterwards, Murder, 1953). Visser's Invitation to Murder won one, of four, consolation prizes alongside Madzy Ford's De speurder zoekt een spook (The Sleuth in Search of a Ghost, 1953), Bert Japin's Stenen voor brood (Stones for Bread, 1953) and Josine Reuling's Poeder en parels (Powder and Pearls, 1953). So a Dutch detective story competition is won by a hardboiled thriller, a crime comedy and something amounting to an anti-detective story. I swear, this country is as hostile an environment to the traditional detective story as Mars is to Earth life.

Invitation to Murder got published and reprinted in the 1953 Bruna omnibus together with the Ford and Japin novels, before it dropped into obscurity for the next thirty years. A year before his death, Visser edited the anthology 3 klassieken uit de Nederlandse misdaad literatuur (3 Classics from Dutch Crime Literature, 1981) and placed Invitation to Murder among the classics. If you're wondering, the other two classics are August Defresne's Moord (Murder, 1931) and Ben van Eysselsteijn's Romance in F-Dur (1934). Not that it helped either the book or its author as both were forgotten again when Visser died in 1982.

So why did I mark Visser's Invitation to Murder down as a Dutch detective novel of potential interest on these shaky credentials? Visser reportedly wrote it as an homage and parody of Agatha Christie with nursery rhymes as a leitmotiv for murder. I thought that sounded like a fun, harmless mystery and a safer bet than usually, considering how I normally go about trying to find good, old-fashioned Dutch detective fiction. Let's find out how it panned out.

Maarten Roesink is a poor, struggling and unrecognized poet with an estranged girlfriend, piles of unpaid bills and an unfinished novel, but nothing to the detriment of his ego, sense of self-importance or that of his poetry – which he blamed on the public ("...a monstrosity of bad taste"). That helped to make him decide to accept the invitation from his aunt, Ina Roesink, to stay with her so he can work on his novel and poetry in peace. Since his landlady is pressing him for rent and his stepfather is talking about getting him a decent office job, Maarten decides to accept his aunt's invitation ("...she may be a cultural barbarian, but she has money..."). So packs a suitcase, borrows some money and travels to Aunt Ida's home, Villa Lucie, in the village of Drechteroord in Gelderland. When he arrives, something is not quite right.

Maarten is greeted by the newly hired housekeeper, Miss Mieke Kremer, who had neither been informed about him or the other guests ("...I seem to have ended up in a boarding house"). There are five other guests: Christiaan and Tine Henkelmans with their two children, twenty-year-old Hortense and eighteen-year-old Eddie. Mrs. Maud de Groot, elderly widow, who's Aunt Ina's oldest friend. Aunt Ina herself is nowhere to be found and no one knows where she or what happened to her. Maarten has to cycle down to the village to file a missing person's report, but is spending the next day bumming cigarettes, trying to borrow money and planning to return home. Only for Aunt Ina to turn up dead as a door nail. She's found inside a kitchen chest, hit over the head, before it was tightly nailed shut.

That brings the police to the villa, represented by Inspector Wietse Dijkstra, who's your typical, anchored to earth Dutch policeman which Visser punctuated by making Dijkstra a Frisian ("...his accent betrayed the Frisian, who speaks Dutch with difficulty"). What follows is largely a paint by numbers investigation revealing the victim was far from a sainted figure to her family and friends. Dijkstra more than once "would swear that all the guests entered into a conspiracy to murder Miss Roesink," because everyone has a motive, they're lying about something and nary an alibi to be found. However, I liked Dijkstra's quick, rapid fire Q&A with all seven suspects as opposed to the usual "dragging the Marsh." I also should mention that the stay at the villa and the death of his aunt starts an unexpected maturing process in the otherwise egocentric poet. Maarten today would have been accused of suffering from main character syndrome, but what if such person suddenly finds himself "not only an heir and witness, but also, and perhaps primarily, a suspect" in a sensational murder case? So slowly, but surely, a change comes over Maarten between the moment his aunt's body is discovered and Dijkstra hits upon the solution.

So we arrive at the most exciting, nerve-wrecking point in any Dutch vintage mystery: the solution. Is it going to hold itself together to deliver at least a fairly decent conclusion, underwhelm or completely fall apart? Good news, bad news. The good news is Visser, stylistically, remained consistent and a breeze to read, but ended bitterly disappointing. You can argue the only real crime happened towards the end, when Visser knifed his own story and let it bleed out over its last two chapters. I can only explain it by giving the solution (SPOILER/ROT13): Nhag Van jnagrq gb rzcgl bhg gur xvgpura purfg jura gur yvq qebccrq ba ure urnq, genccvat ure vafvqr frevbhfyl vawherq naq hapbafpvbhf. Fur unq nfxrq gur ivyyntr pnecragre, n qehax, gb pbzr bire naq anvy gur purfg fuhg, juvpu ur qvq jvgubhg ybbxvat vafvqr. Fb na nppvqrag gung ybbxrq yvxr zheqre ol hayvxryl pvephzfgnaprf. Invitation to Murder is basically one of those detective novels walking back its entire premise and the whole story itself into one big, blood-red herring. Something like that can absolutely be done, and successfully, but not it was executed here as it only leaves you with the feeling you just wasted your time – someone with Visser's credentials should have known better. Even more so thirty years later, when he inserted it into the 3 Classics from Dutch Crime Literature anthology.

I really wanted to like Invitation to Murder and silently rooted for Visser to carry the story and plot pass the finish line, but the end result is not the stuff of classics. Far from it. I would have been perfectly happy with a serviceable mystery. So my search for another Cor Docter or Ton Vervoort continues and hope you me on my next wandering through the post-apocalyptic landscape of the Dutch detective story.