The Student Who Was to Get Married (2018) by Anne van Doorn

During the past year, I reviewed two Dutch short story collections by "Anne van Doorn," a penname of crime novelist M.P.O. Books, in which he laid the groundwork for a series of detective stories about a pair of particuliere onderzoekers (private investigators), Robbie Corbijn and Lowina de Jong – specialized in cases which have lain unsolved for years or even decades. They work primarily on missing person cases and unsolved murders, but occasionally also take on problems too bizarre for the police (e.g. "The Girl Who Stuck Around" from the second collection).

So far, there have been two collections of short stories and two full-length novels with more short stories and a third novel in the offing in the coming months.

De geliefde die in het veen verdween en andere mysteries (The Lover Who Disappeared in the Bog and Other Mysteries, 2017) collected the first short stories in this series and was followed by the novel-length De ouders keerden niet terug (The Parents Didn't Return, 2017). De bergen die geen vergetelheid kennen en andere mysteries (The Mountains That Do Not Forget and Other Mysteries, 2018) appeared earlier this year and was recently followed by De student die zou trouwen (The Student Who Was to Get Married, 2018). There are twelve stories scheduled to be published between July, 2018 and September, 2019 with a third novel to be released that same year – entitled De man die zijn geweten ontlastte (The Man Who Cleared His Conscience, 2019). The third batch of short stories looks very promising and apparently includes two stories of the impossible variety.

I decided to finally take a crack at the novels and, as to be expected from me, I ignored the chronology of the series and picked up the second book, but this time there's a good reason for it. The Student Who Was to Get Married is the conclusion of forty year old missing person case that Corbijn is obsessed with and has been referred to in the short stories numerous times. A second reason is that part of the story takes place in Utrecht. Just look at the beautiful Domtoren (Dom Tower) on the book cover!

The 23-year-old Jan Willem de Geer is the student of the book-title, who completed his study in biochemical engineering in 1976 with honors, which earned him a research grant from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was about to get married to Helma Lansink – after which they would emigrate to the United States. On July 8, 1976, nine days before his wedding and two weeks before they would move to America, De Geer simply vanished from the face of the Earth.

On the day of his disappearance, De Geer had called his fiance, borrowed the bicycle from a fellow student and went to a bookstore in the center of Utrecht. There he ordered a book and bought a newspaper, which will play a key-part in the investigation, but there the trail simply ended. De Geer was never heard or seen of again.

De Geer was in a good mood on the day of his disappearance, although he was worried about something in the preceding days, but nothing to indicate he was planning to cut and run. So the family and his fiance are shocked when, two months later, a young woman by the name of Vicky Kramer turns up out of the blue and claims she's pregnant with De Geer's child – result of a one-night stand back in February. Kramer has a bank check, signed by De Geer, as prove he was to acknowledge their unborn child and cancel the wedding. However, more than a decade later, a DNA-test proved Kramer had been lying and scammed the well-to-do family of De Geer out of a small fortune. The last tangible clue was the borrowed bicycle that was eventually dredged, properly locked, from a rural canal near a hamlet in South Holland. Someone had obviously dumped it there.

This happened forty years ago and the case has not only gone cold, but the statute of limitations, in case of murder, run out in 1994. Only thing the family can really hope for is finding the remains of De Geer and learning what really happened on the sweltering summer day in 1976. So they hire Recherchebureau Corbijn – Research & Discover.

Corbijn has been obsessing over this case since the series began and there are numerous references to their tireless investigation in the short stories. In the final story of The Mountains That Do Not Forget and Other Mysteries, "De dame die niet om hulp had gevraagd" ("The Lady Who Had Not Asked for Help"), Corbijn tells a story to De Jong about a previous case, while they wait for the identification of a recently unearthed skeleton, which was found when a fallen tree had lay bare a shallow grave – clues found in the grave suggest that the skeleton may belong to the long-missing Jan Willem de Geer. These clues are his watch and the keys of the bicycle. Well, the remains are identified as belonging to De Geer and he was brutally beaten to death before being buried.

Corbijn and De Jong begin their last, exhausting leg of this long-dragging investigation and the path to the truth bridges stretches across an entire year as they question the people who are still alive and (interestingly) let them read the old, 1976 newspaper De Geer had bought on the day he disappeared – hoping this may yield a clue. They also have to answer the puzzling question why the remains of De Geer was unearthed in a secluded area, on the Darthuizerberg near the village of Leersum, on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug and the bicycle in the Woerdense Verlaat. Those two places are at least 40 kilometers apart.

So this reads more like a police procedural than a detective novel. Only difference is that instead of two professional policemen we have a pair private investigators who plow through this case like an unflagging, doggedly-determined Inspector French.

There are traces here of the police procedural in the private lives of Corbijn and De Jong, which, by the way, do not intrude on the story like so many other modern crime series do. There are, however, problems in the personal lives of the two detectives. De Jong has trouble at home stemming from a debt she inherited from her father and Corbijn, who's very keen on his privacy, has several skeletons rattling in his closet throughout the book. This makes me suspect that Corbijn is the man who'll relieve his conscience in the third novel.

There were also several references to the coming stories and some were very interesting to say the least. One of the case they're working on in the background is a murder by strangulation of an American on a city bus, but nobody on the bus saw or heard a thing! A second case they're looking into is a fifty year old murder of a Belgian mine-worker committed hundreds of meters underground! I only wish the mine-murder story was set even further back into the past, because that would given him the opportunity to use the now long-vanished country of Neutral Moresnet. A miniature state that once existed from 1816 to 1920 on the three-country-border between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The country existed around a zinc mine and, due to its special status, was used as a clearing point for liquor smuggling. Moresnet was a Libertarian's wet-dream come true. Somehow, this unique place, brimming with possibilities, was never used in a detective story. Not even in an adventure or spy yarn. Believe me, I looked. Anyway...

The Student Who Was to Get Married is not a detective story, but a police procedural in the private-eye mold and this makes for engaging story, as you follow them along, but you're never placed in a position that allows you to put all the pieces together yourself. There are hints and foreshadowing, but nothing in the way of proper clueing. However, you discover everything at the same time as Corbijn and De Jong. So the book plays fair in regards that the detectives don't keep anything from the reader.

However, despite this not being really a proper detective story, I burned through the pages like an unquenchable forest fire. You see, long before the impossible crime genre stole my heart, I was fascinated by detective stories in which the past rises from the grave to obscure the present by the unearthing of a pile of bones. I also mention this interest in my 2011 review of Bill Pronzini's Bones (1985) and probably explained myself a lot better there. I simply find intriguing how these stories not only piece together the scattered, time-worn pieces of a long-forgotten crime, but often also have reconstruct the past itself. Something that was very well done here as a hot-button political issue of the 1970s and the effects of the seventeen-day heatwave dovetails with the who, how and why of the murder.

The Student Who Was to Get Married was a well-written, compelling crime novel that kept me glued to the pages. I'm looking forward to the coming short stories and one of them will be reviewed before too long.

The Mountains That Do Not Forget and Other Mysteries (2018) by Anne van Doorn

Last year, I reviewed De geliefde die in het veen verdween en andere mysteries (The Lover Who Disappeared in the Bog and Other Mysteries, 2017) by "Anne van Doorn," a penname of Dutch crime-writer M.P.O. Books, which is a collection comprising of a handful of short stories about two particuliere onderzoekers (private investigators), Robbie Corbijn and Lowina de Jong – who specialize in unsolved cases that have long gone cold. Recherchebureau Corbijn – Research & Discover handles everything from long-standing missing person's cases to cold, unsolved homicides and regularly tackle problems too bizarre or unusual for the regular police.

Corbijn is the head investigator of this two-man agency and provides the brainpower that earns them a paycheck, while De Jong pulls triple duty as his pupil, assistant and narrator. They work from an apartment in a residential tower, called the Kolos van Cronesteyn, which stands in Leiden, South-Holland, but their work brings them to every nook and corner of the country. And even beyond.

The first collection of five stories brought Corbijn and De Jong from Den Haag and Groningen to one of the Wadden Sea Islands and the Belgian Ardennes. And they tackled a diverse range of cases and problems such as an inexplicable murder inside a sealed log cabin ("The Poet Who Locked Himself In"), a vanished hiker in the Ardennes ("The Lover Who Disappeared in the Bog") and pulling apart a knot of human tragedies closely tied to the death of a child ("The Brat Who Went Too Far") - a modus operandi continued in the second collection of short stories. Nearly every story in this series is an example of how elements of the old-fashioned, traditional detective story can be merged with the modern-day crime genre.

This second volume of stories, titled De bergen die geen vergetelheid kennen en andere mysteries (The Mountains That Do Not Forget and Other Mysteries, 2018), consists, like its predecessor, of five short stories. All five of them had been previously published as separate ebooks. So let's take these stories down from the top.

"De boerin die niet wilde sterven" ("The Farmer's Wife Who Didn't Want to Die") is the opening story and presents Corbijn's young assistant with a case of her own.

Lowina de Jong graduated a course that made her an official, licensed private investigator and Corbijn offers her an internship with a friend and colleague in the east of the country – where she'll get an opportunity to gain practical knowledge. During her summer internship, De Jong is consulted by a nurse from Aruba, Liberty Pinho, who had been out of a job ever since the nursing home, where she worked, closed down. Recently, she was offered a position as a live-in nurse at a farmhouse, to take care of a terminally ill woman, but the conditions and circumstances proved to be reason of concern. One of these conditions practically turned her in a prisoner and there are vicious guard dogs prowling the grounds. And even more peculiar, some of the windows are covered with paint and obscure the view of a wooded area behind the farm!

This is not really a detective story, classic or modern, but a homage to the Victorian-era sensationalist fiction with a familial secret hidden away in "an old, dilapidated tower from the thirteenth century." However, the family secret here is a decidedly modern one. So not a bad story, but one that will probably be more appreciated by readers who love Joseph Sheridan Lafuna and Wilkie Collins.

The next story is "Het meisje dat bleef rondhangen" ("The Girl Who Stuck Around") and is easily the standout in this collection. A ghostly tale of murder and deception reminiscent of some of John Dickson Carr's eerily atmospheric detective stories.

Corbijn and De Jong are asked to look into a one-sided car accident on "a completely deserted country road," which is cursed with "a notorious bend," where people have often smashed into a row of trees and this latest accident was seen by two witnesses – who saw the car disappear around the corner. And this was followed by a loud crash. The driver was seriously wounded and, before losing consciousness, asked the paramedics how the little girl was doing. However, nobody else had been involved in this accident. Let alone a child. This was not the only unexplained accident that occurred on that stretch of deserted road.

Several years previously, an identical accident happened on exactly the same spot. Apparently, the driver had tried to avoid hitting someone who was standing in the middle of the road, but nobody was actually there. The driver had not survived the collision with one of the trees. Corbijn and De Jong learn that a child, Marion, had died on that road and her mother, who lives nearby, is convinced that the ghost of the child is haunting her home and the place where she died. The two detectives even get a glimpse of the ghostly girl, "a frightened face," looking at them between the thick, dark trees!

I already mentioned that the story reminded me of the work of my favorite mystery writer, Carr, but the plot really could have been used for one of his own short stories from The Department of Queer Complaints (1940), which is part of a lamentably short-lived series and a literary relative of this one – as both have a penchant for bizarre or even (borderline) impossible crimes. So an excellent story that stands with the best collected in the previous compendium and genuinely tragic on account of the psychological toll the ghostly apparitions had on the grieving parents of the dead girl.

The third story lends its title to this collection, "De bergen die geen vergetelheid kennen" ("The Mountains That Do Not Forget"), which brings Corbijn to "the most isolated valley in northern Albania." He's asked by colleague to give a second opinion on an unsolved locked tower murder that happened there in May, 1933!

Corbijn tells the story to De Jong and gives a detailed account of the customs and traditions of the region, which lay at the heart of the plot. Apparently, a lot of the background was drawn from Edith Durham's High Albania (1909). Anyway, a long-lasting bloedvete (blood-vendetta) between two families that had begun the theft of sheep has culminated in dozens of deaths on both side of those cursed mountains. Only during the communist occupation did the weapons cease, because the regime was cracking down on the old customs. Everyone who participated were taken away and executed. And until the 1990s, the mountains were at peace. 

However, ever since the fall of the Soviet Union the old feuds have been resurrected and the murder of woman in 1933 is at the core of this long-standing vendetta, who was shot against the rules of the Code, when she was hiding in the locked attic of a kulla e ngujimit – a so-called "locked-in tower" where the men used to hit when a hit was called on one of them by their rivals. There was only a small, open window at the top of the tower, but it looked out on a sheer drop ending in a river, but could a shot have been fired through the window from the ground? There was no gun found inside the attic room, but there were scorch-marks on the body. Suggesting that she was shot at close range.

Unfortunately, the solution is not only very obvious, but borrowed from a well-known short detective story by an even more well-known mystery writer. And the explanation was used by another writer in an impossible crime story with a very similar setting (i.e. a locked tower room). However, the attraction of this story is its backdrop and the history of its people. And the (hilarious) consequences Corbijn's solution has for him and his colleague. Needless to say, they had to run. :)

The next story is "Het hoertje dat geen spoor achterliet" ("The Whore Who Left No Trace Behind") and, as modern as the title may sound, this was my return to Baker Street, but, in this case, it's De Warmoesstraat. A street where, once upon a time, stood a notorious police station where the man who formally introduced me to the detective story, the late A.C. Baantjer, worked for three decades as a policeman and homicide detective. Bureau Warmoesstraat also featured prominently in his many delightful police/mystery novels. I really miss Baantjer. Anyway...

In this story, "a dingy hotel on the Warmoesstraat" functions as the backdrop. A writer of erotic thrillers, Marlinde Vries a.k.a "Patricia Rooth," caught her husband, Gerhard von Krefeld, with a prostitute in a hotel room and stabbed him to death – or so the evidence suggests. However, her brother simply refuses to accept to the conclusion of the police and hires Corbijn and De Jong to exonerate his sister by finding out who really killed Von Krefeld. A search that begins with finding the prostitute who vanished without a trace after the murder and the police had been unable to find her. She's not only a witness, but a potential suspect as well.

Even without the clues, I anticipated the solution as soon as the murderer entered the picture. But the plot hang together nicely and, as said, there was some clues planted here and there. I really liked this brief return to the most famous street in Dutch detective and police history.

Finally, the last story in this collection, "De dame die niet om hulp had gevraagd" ("The Lady Who Had Not Asked for Help"), ends the collection on a high-note and functions as bridge to the second, full-length novel in this series. But more on that later.

Corbijn is impatiently waiting on a confirmation on whether or not the skeleton remains that were recently found belong to a student who has been missing since 1978. So, to kill the time, De Jong suggests he tells her story about the time he was a still a policeman and he tells him about the curious case of an elderly lady who had not asked them for help. Mrs. Olde Meierink is an old woman who lives in the middle of the woods and her lonely house can only be reached by "a long, dirt road, full of holes and bends, right through the forest," but the police and even the fire department regularly have to traverse that road after a frantic call to the emergency number – only to discover that nothing has happened. Mrs. Meierink claims she never called for help and she can even provide a cast-iron alibi for one of the time she supposedly called the police. So who was making the calls and what is the motive behind them?

Corbijn and De Jong have to root around the deep, dark past and family history of Mrs. Meierink, which reaches all the way back to Drenthe, South Africa and Rhodesia. The phone-calls turns out to be key elements of a delightful revenge plot with a great, motivational drive. I was reminded of Edward D. Hoch's "The Theft of the Onyx Pool," collected in The Thefts of Nick Velvet (1978), which had a character with a scheme that was similar in nature and with exactly the same motivation, but with a completely different approach. So a solid story to close out this collection.

On a whole, The Mountains That Do Not Forget is a nicely balanced collection of traditional-minded, plot-driven detective stories presented as short story forms of the contemporary misdaadroman (crime novel). They're a sad reminder what the crime genre could have looked like today had modern-day writers not abandoned logically constructed plots, clueing and such delightful tropes as impossible crimes and dying messages. We could have been like Japan!

I can't deny I feel a tinge of nationalistic pride that my country has produced a writer who, in this day and age, writes in the tradition of Doyle, Christie and Carr. It makes me feel all imperial inside. So, yes, I quite enjoyed these five stories.

On a final, related note, that second, full-length novel I mentioned is scheduled for release in May, titled De student die zou trouwen (The Student Who Was To Get Married, 2018), which takes place in my own backyard and naturally love the book-cover. However, I really should read the first novel, De ouders keerden niet terug (The Parents Did Not Return, 2017), before getting around to that second one. So I'll try to worm the first one in, sometime, next month or so. So you better stick around!

Driven to Destruction

"We meet people on the worst day of their lives."

- Gil Grissom (CSI) 

M.P.O. Books' Cruise Control (2014) is the eighth in a series of police procedurals, blending the characterization of the contemporary crime-and thriller novels with the plot-awareness of a classic whodunit, which began with the publication of Bij verstek veroordeeld (Sentenced in Absentia, 2004). And that was than a decade ago.

District Heuvelrug series has evolved quite a lot over that time period. The first couple of books had Bram Petersen, a veteran police inspector, and his younger assistant, Ronald Bloem, as the main protagonists, but Bloem transferred to another district in De laatse kans (The Last Chance, 2011) due to personal issues and Petersen resided into the background after his wife suffered a stroke in De dood van Callista de Vries (The Death of Callista de Vries, 2012) – giving room for other characters to shine and develop.

There was a hiatus of four years between the publications of Gedragen haat (Hatred Borne, 2006) and De blikvanger (The Eye-Catcher, 2010), during which Books was shopping around for a new publisher and (obviously) improving his craft. The plots from 2010 onwards are delightfully complex, interlaced with clues, and graciously unraveled by a team of professional police men-and women in the spirit of Ed McBain 87th Precinct series. The Eye-Catcher and Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013) were sporting impossible crimes, but The Last Chance, even without a locked room mystery, remains a personal favorite – which says something about the quality of the story and plot!

Cruise Control can be characterized as a third shift in direction for the series and this might explain one of two things: the length of the story, almost twice as long as normal, and why the opening chapters felt as an introduction to a completely new series.

Gisella Markus is introduced to the reader as a police woman in her early forties, who found herself, surprisingly, ascending to the rank of Chief-Inspector, with an invalid, embittered and nagging husband at home – who insists on being a drag on her life. Niels Hanse is the one who usually assists Markus on cases and a column of support for her to lean against, but their present assignment impacts Hanse, who's gay, personally.

The body of a half naked man was found in the vicinity of a recreational area, De Treekerpunt, known as a rendezvous spot for cruising gays and was shot, execution style, between the eyes. Hanse is sure the shooting was the work of someone with a grudge against homosexuals, but Markus thinks the murderer could very well have been one of the cruising men. After all, Felix van Leeuwen dealt in narcotics and had caused trouble before. Van Leeuwen's behavior gave even the forest ranger a motive and this provided the first leads for the assembled task force to sift through, which includes Inge Veenstra from District Heuvelrug and her former colleage, Ronald Bloem.

A vile-worded bloedtekst (blood text), written in chicken blood, fuels Hanse's theory, but colliding opinion and personal circumstances continue to bug the investigation. Than, exactly six weeks later, the shooter strikes again and, before long, another blood text is found: "IK PROBEER EEN PROBLEEM OP TE LOSSEN” (“I'M TRYING TO SOLVE A PROBLEM"). The team recognizes this as a possible indicator that they might be dealing with a serial killer, who's warming up, and they receive more manpower. Actually, A Sealed House ended with John van Keeken, who replaced Bloem, hearing the news of the second murder and was to go there to strengthen the team.

Eventually, they even drag Bram Petersen from special leave to give his opinion on the case, but mounting media attention and internal division plague the investigation relentlessly. There's an anonymous "whistleblower" that accuses the conservative-minded, but always respectable, Petersen of homophobia, while the murderer delivers a personal blow to the investigators in the next hail of bullets. As well as blowing my already fragmented theories to a thousand tiny little pieces.

M.P.O. Books with Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013)

I found it interesting how Books rendered an otherwise well-oiled and experienced team of professional police investigators useless by pouring gallons of raw emotions into the machine, which made me overlook a majority of the clues and the identity of the well-hidden murderer caught me by surprise. I openly admit that. But I loved how Petersen functioned from the sideline, as an old-fashioned armchair detective, connecting the dots based on footprints, gun knowledge and Jack the Ripper-lore to reveal the killer.

However, the ending clearly shows Books has one foot as firmly planted in the modern school of crime fiction as in the one honoring the traditional art of murder, because, character-wise, his novels have the penchant to end on a dark note. I even felt sympathy for Bloem and I was glad when Van Keeken took his place, but now I would welcome him back into the fold out of sheer pity. Poor guy.

Nevertheless, I'm quite proud of our homegrown, neo-orthodox crime/mystery author and his methods has its desired effect: I'm very curious about the aftermath of Cruise Control, but I have a suspicion the answer won't be given in the next book. I suspect that the following book will be about the, briefly mentioned, investigation of the kidnapped-and murdered shop owner in Utrecht that Bloem was a part of and probably involved Inspector Arthur van der Camp – which would explain Bloem's behavior in this story. Well, hopefully, the shop owner was conscientious enough to have allowed himself to be snuffed out under impossible circumstances inside a sealed or guarded room.

To summarize: Cruise Control is a high strung, character-driven police thriller with detective interruptions and the story is packaged in a deluxe paperback edition with diagrams of the crime scenes. What's there not to like, if you enjoy crime fiction in general?

The Raven and the Criminal

"You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light."

- Edward Abbey 

Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013) is the seventh entry in M.P.O. Books' District Heuvelrug series, which takes place directly after the events from the previous novel, De dood van Callista de Vries (The Death of Callista de Vries, 2012), and everything added to one of his most impressive juggling acts – going all the way this time in combining the best of two eras into a contemporary crime novel.

Fred Duijster was one of the figureheads of the Dutch criminal underworld, whose name turned up in a number of high-profile investigations without a single conviction to show for it. His fortified home can vouch that Duijster was not a man you were likely to catch off guard. The windows were secured with steel shutters and the premises are monitored with motion sensors that trigger overhead lights and cameras. Back and front. They are so sensitive that birds, cats, hedgehogs and prying neighbors can set them off. You could basically splice the security footage from the garden together to create an episode for The Animals of Farthing Wood.

Duijster allowed a handful of people into his home and fewer knew he lived there, but despite these precautions, someone still got to him. Brutally got him! Beaten and gutted with a kitchen knife.

An investigation is launched by the police, but here's where we get the first clue that this, stylistically, is going to be a different kind of story because Inspector Bram Petersen is sidelined for this investigation – after his wife suffered a stroke and her life is hanging by a thread. This sounds like typically police procedural stuff, but Petersen is just a background character here that makes a few brief appearances. That doesn't mean that his wife's critical condition or his grief is not shown or addressed, but it's not intruded upon, which I find to be infinitely more realistic than a long, drawn-out account of her dying process.

The man they found to replace Petersen is a transfer from Utrecht, Inspector Arthur van der Camp, who garnered praise there for his tough opposition against (organized) crime and thus the man to lead the investigation – which turns into a slam dunk case after an analysis of the security footage. The video clearly shows only one person entered and left the house at the time of the murder, a self-professed reformed criminal named Rafaël du Mez, alias "Raaf," who denies any involvement and demands a lawyer. Of course, nothing goes as smooth as it should be going due to internal struggles.

Here the plot takes another departure from the norm of the series: the sister of the suspect, Elvira, hires Sjoerd Guikema as her brother's defense counsel, and all of the sudden, where in an American mystery novel from the 1940s! Well, that's how my brain translated it. Guikema is overworked as it's and has no interest whatsoever in taking the case. That's until he sees Elvira and is suddenly inspired with an all-consuming will to help clear her brothers' name.

The parts of the story tag around with them smack of the amateur mystery solving couples that kept up the spirits of the English speaking nations during the war years. Books experimented before with an amateur sleuth in the trappings of a police procedural in the titular novella from the short story collection Dodelijke Hobby (Deadly Hobby, 2012), but this was by far the better of the two and both of them offered a false solution as to how someone could've entered the house undetected. They were surprisingly classical as well! Giekema's solution was definitely a nod to Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four (1890), one of Books' favorite mystery writers, while Elvira's reminded me of Fergus Hume's The Silent House (1899) – if I remember that particular story correctly.

How the murderer circumvented the surveillance cameras and censors, gained access without tempering the locks or shutters, survive a knife fight with a dangerous criminal, and left again under the same circumstances was fairly easy (apart from the knife fight bit, of course). But that's often the beauty of a locked mystery, which appears to be completely impossible, when the answer is actually quite simple. Carter Dickson's The Judas Window (1938) and Herbert Resnicow's The Gold Solution (1983) have a similar premise as A Sealed House, in which a single person is fingered as a cold blooded murderer, because another suspect is a physical impossibility, and while I don't think it was quite on par with the former, I definitely think it was better than the latter. The Gold Solution is actually comparable to A Sealed House, because it also revolves around a fortified crime scene with a state of the art security system designed to keep people out or locked them in. So I have no complaints in that department.

If I have any complaints, it's that if criminals were as smart as they are portrayed here, I would be known the world over as the Sherlock Holmes of the modern age and the ending was a bit, uhm, what's the word... overkill? It has been commented upon before that writers like Bill Pronzini and William DeAndrea don't shy away from a dramatic climax at gunpoint, but Books must have been on fire when he wrote those chapters! I think he didn't hear the ghost of Mickey Spillane over the gunfire-like banging of his keyboard to tone it down just a little bit.

For the non-Dutch readers who are curious (a MILD SPOILER, select to read): a hostage situation erupts when the murderer is cornered and to prove the demands were not being made in jest, two very, very dead bodies were wormed out of window down to a street filled with policemen, onlookers and I think even a rolling camera or two.

Those mean streets of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are far more uglier below sea level. Anyway, to round this long, rambling review off, A Sealed House is an explosion of creativity scattering across various areas of the genre: the crime offered a classic locked room problem with some old-fashioned amateur snooping on the side, while the official police investigation of the murder further fleshed out some of the people who do that work and the milieu of the story gave everything a hardboiled edge. I also liked how the book set-up characters and storylines for down the line, because I doubt we've seen the last of Guikema or Van der Camp. The plot for the next book was also foreshadowed as a special police team is being formed. 

Long, long story short, A Sealed House is one of the best in the series that have been published up to this point and I'm eagerly anticipating the next installment. 

District Heuvelrug series: 

Bij verstek veroordeeld (Sentenced in Absentia, 2004)

De bloedzuiger (The Bloodsucker, 2005)

Gedragen haat (Hatred Borne, 2006)

De blikvanger (The Eye-Catcher, 2010)

De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011)

De dood van Callista de Vries (The Death of Callista de Vries, 2012)
Dodelijke hobby (Deadly Hobby, 2012)

Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013)

Things That Go Bump in the Night

"A cup of kindness that we share with another
A sweet reunion with a friend or a brother."

- It Feels Like Christmas (The Muppet Christmas Carol, 1992)

I had to interrupt and postpone an unusual New Year's mystery, when M.P.O. Books' Dodelijke hobby (Deadly Hobby, 2012), a slender, soft-cover volume comprising of a novelette, a pair of short stories and some promotional material, arrived in the mail – an early Christmas present, to be sure!

Dodelijk hobby was originally published as a downloadable, free-give-away ebook, after being shelved for a number of years when Books and his previous publisher parted ways, but due to its enormous success (close to 80.000 downloads!) and numerous requests for a print version, it was "bookformed" with some of his other, earlier material. The tales that make up this book show the other side of Books, a crime writer who's also aware of the works of the literaties laboring in his field. Except for the second, classically styled story and the titular novelette shines with his love for intricate plotting and the Sherlock Holmes canon. Books also announced the title of his next District Heuvelrug novel: Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013). I told you it was like Christmas came early this year!

Deadly Hobby takes place during the dark, snowy days of Christmas that André Lourier was hoping to spend in the company of Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens. He's house-sitting a remote village that belongs to his cousin and her husband, who's an avid collector of Delfts blue, miniature houses and has build quite a collection up in his secured attic-room. But it's due to André that burglars were able to swipe the entire collection from under his nose and with the Christmas celebrations in full swing, the police are understaffed and their hands tied-up to more press casings. So the housekeepers decides to turn detective and help the attractive inspector, Inge Veenstra, help finding the thieves and restore the collection.

But it's a fare more complex story involving more than just a stolen city of Delfts blue houses. Just in the first half, a number of apparently unrelated plot threads are introduced that all tie-together in the end. This is very reminiscent of the kaleidoscopic plotting technique Books used in De blikvanger (The Eye-Catcher, 2010) and De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011), which had very satisfying results. Unfortunately, Deadly Hobby missed out on the opportunity of giving the reader a fair shot at cracking the case themselves, but that still leaves the reader with a well-written crime story that literary keeps you guessing until the end!

Interestingly, Deadly Hobby has a weird tie-in with the Van Dine-Queen and Hardboiled School. This is completely coincidental, but interesting, nonetheless. André Lourier assumes the role of amateur sleuth in a case revolving around collectors and the movement of everyone involved ends up being very important for the solution. This plot complexity with a clear and understandable solution was something these writers aimed for and we also get to see Books' series character, Inspector Bram Petersen, and his team of policemen work on another case – a triple homicide echoing the crime from Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot." Books also continued to flesh out his characters in this book, which helped made the story feel part of the series instead of standalone (all that in less than 90 pages!).

Less typical of the Van Dine-Queen School, but more so for the Hardboiled guys, was the portrayal of criminals and few physical altercations, including André getting knocked on the head and locked up in a room, while the burglar plundered the attic, after which he's determined to set the thing right himself. Much like a chivalrous, lone-knight in a raincoat and fedora would've done. As a matter of fact, André's situation reminded me of The Nameless Detective’s predicament in Bill Pronzini’s "Where Have You Gone, Sam Spade?"

"Handige dief!" ("Handy Thief!") was penned nine years ago for the Dutch website Crimezone. The story is set in an English, countryside village in the present time, but the status quo of a previous era has remained in tact and the villagers have gathered on the cemetery to pay their last respects to a local baron – who's to be buried in the family tomb with a valuable brooch encrusted with stones. A local "handyman," Harold Straker, plans to relieve the baron from his Earthly possession, but the ancient tomb is equipped with modern locks. A fun little story with a twist. 

"De indringer" ("The Intruder") is a straight up thriller and involves a well-to-do, but insecure woman, who finally found a companion before he went missing. One night, she finds that there's an intruder in the house. Has he returned? Not my kind of story, I'm afraid.

All in all, this volume served a few nice morsels of crime to whet the appetite for what’s coming next year. 

Destrict Heuvelrug series: 

Bij verstek veroordeeld (Sentenced in Absentia, 2004)

De bloedzuiger (The Bloodsucker, 2005)

Gedragen haat (Hatred Borne, 2006)

De blikvanger (The Eye-Catcher, 2010)

De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011)

De dood van Callista de Vries (The Death of Callista de Vries, 2012)

Dodelijke hobby (Deadly Hobby, 2012)

Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013)

What Lies Beneath the Surface

"Exactly! It is absurd — improbable — it cannot be. So I myself have said. And yet, my friend, there it is! one cannot escape from the facts."

- Hercule Poirot (Murder on the Orient Express, 1934).

If there's one thing we have enough of here, it's water. We have so much of the stuff that we could drown in it. Literarily! To prevent this from happening, a campaign was waged against the rising water by engineering and building dikes to provide a sturdy resistance against the pounding waves of a brimming ocean, but our arsenal also includes levees, canals, estuaries and nature reserves – giving the water the space it needs to flow and drain away without washing away half of the country. One of these spots is De Blauwe Kamer (The Blue Room), a riverside reserve, affixed to the Utrechtse Heuvelrug (Utrecht Hill Ridge), which also happens to be the natural habitat and hunting ground of the furrowed-faced Inspector Petersen, where he, and his colleagues, have to roam the slopes and hills after a scavenger of a different breed left a body in the waters of the reserve. 

De dood van Callista de Vries (The Death of Callista de Vries, 2012) is the sixth full-length novel in the District Heuvelrug series and begins when a diving team probe the waters of The Blue Room for unexploded ammunition from World War II, but what they drag up is a ripped sack containing the bloated and gnawed body of a woman – weighted down with heavy boulders. Murder, plain and simple, which is not something that can be said of the circumstances in which the crime was discovered as it conflicts with the statements given by the silent witnesses. The body was wrapped up and weighted down, indicating that the murderer wanted to delay the discovery as long as possible, allowing the murky waters and animals to erode the evidence, but, why then, dump the body in a place where it was bound to be discovered? It was widely publicized that the area would be cleared for leftover ammunition from the war and the path to the scene of the crime took the murderer pass a house and three house boats! A considerable and unnecessary risk when you consider that the region was fertile with watery graves where a body could sink into Leth. 

Usually, these cases are solved once the police learns the name their John or Jane Doe listened to in their daily lives, but this is a detective story and the victim turns out to have been somewhat of a cherchez la femme named Callista de Vries – a beautiful young woman from Utrecht who was reported missing two days previously. Callista openly broke off her relationship with Iwan van Schijndel, who declares that they were back together, but he had to promise her to keep everything under wraps for a while and this secrecy may overlap with her having moved around in the criminal layers of society. Even more baffling is that Iwan van Schijndel was one of the divers who found the body! There you have it, just a few of the winding pathways leading through the maze that Petersen has to navigate his team through.

Last year, I wrote a laudatory review of Marco Books' De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011), which I praises as a "lavishly plotted detective story" and the clueing and misdirection was straight out of a classic detective story. One clue in particular was an absolute gem! Ever since finding a home at his new publisher, De Leeskamer (The Reading Room), he has been improving leaps and bounds as a writer, finding a better balance between plot and character with each passing book, and has become  much more comfortable with the form.

In a recent YouTube video, Books explained the difference between "lazy police novels" and whodunits. You can read one without having to burden your brain, sit back and let the words of the author lead you to solution, while the latter gives you a fair shot at beating the detective to the solution. That is, if you are clever and observant enough.

Books gave this format a modern interpretation similar to a number of post-GAD writers discussed on the blog. Over the course of these books, the reader has learned almost as much about the policemen who investigate crimes as the crimes they investigate and snippets of their personal lives show them to be more than a mere collection of theatrical puppets, dressed up as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, waiting in the wings to thwart the killer in the final act. And this without dumbing down the plot. 

The plot of De dood van Callista de Vries is also scattered with clues, but they were a trifle weaker and missed the brilliant radiance of the ones that were tucked away between the covers of the previous book, however, they were still there and that made for stimulating read. Books has pulled off a hat trick with this book, delivering three engagingly written, well-paced and deftly plotted detective stories in the same number of years, and the well of ideas he draws from seems to be far from being dried up. 

Last, but not least, I have to compliment Books' publisher, Hans van den Boom, who said that Books "shows that he's a grand master of the whodunit.” What? A publisher who openly admits that one of his writers does something as vulgar as writing whodunits? Well, I guess I was right when I thought I saw a Silver Age of Detection dawning at the horizon the other day. :)

Destrict Heuvelrug series: 

Bij verstek veroordeeld (Sentenced in Absentia, 2004)

De bloedzuiger (The Bloodsucker, 2005)

Gedragen haat (Hatred Borne, 2006)

De blikvanger (The Eye-Catcher, 2010)

De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011)

De dood van Callista de Vries (The Death of Callista de Vries, 2012)