Vintage Mystery Challenge 2012: Doing the Dutch

"You've got stuck in a moment
And now you can't get out of it."

- U2 (Stuck in a Moment)

A comfort to the reader: if this posts strikes you as familiar, than you're not experiencing déjà-vu. Just like Patrick, I'm dropping out of the 2012 Vintage Mystery Challenge. 

I thought that compiling a list of reviews, collected under the title Dutch Delinquencies for the 2012 Vintage Mystery Challenge, would be easy sailing when I picked up the gauntlet that Bev had thrown down, but inopportunely, I had to ask if readers who haunted this blog were actually interested in reviews of untranslated, non-English mysteries – which received a discouraging reply. This makes it futile to sprint for the deadline, because it would inevitable result in a barrage of reviews that only a few want to read.  

In hindsight, the lack of views and comments were (alas!) an indicator of disinterest, but nonetheless gambled on the cat-like curiosity, a key trait of the mystery enthusiast, to garner a small crowd of inquisitive onlookers.

Ho-Ling was only partially correct when he observed that reviewing non-English detective stories is like working in a niche area within a niche area, however, he neglected to mention that those niches are part of a ramshackle, boarded-up house with a reputation of being haunted and few who dear to venture near it.

Anyway, I will continue to explore and write about foreign mysteries, albeit in smaller doses, so bear with me whenever I bring one up.

Finally, a new review will be up over the weekend.

When September Ends

"War doesn't mature men; it merely pickles them in the brine of disgust and dread."

- Nero Wolfe (Over My Dead Body, 1940). 

Jan de Hartog (1914-2002) was a Dutch novelist remembered on his native soil for the 1940 novel Hollands Glorie (Dutch Glory; translated in English under the title Captain Jan), which was often demonstratively put down on checkout counters or displayed in shop windows as a protest to the German occupation, but also attracted international acclaim with novels such as The Captain (1967) and The Peaceable Kingdom: An American Saga (1972) – one of 'em enabled him to chalk up a nomination for the Nobel Prize to his name.

What's a little-less known, is that De Hartog began his ascendance as a man of letters with a series of detective stories, published in the 1930s, under the penname "F.R. Eckmar" – which sounds as "verrek maar." This play-on-words, literarily meaning "drop dead," was directed at the publishers who had rejected his previous manuscripts. But when success and a respectable reputation began dogging his footsteps, he distanced himself from these early endeavors: labeling them as a youthful lapse of judgment and expressing relief that his global audience was never exposed to them.

Een linkerbeen gezocht (Wanted: A Left Leg, 1935) introduces the reader to the trinity of Commissioner Wiebe Poesiat, Inspector Gregor Boyarski and Yvonne Delpêche – a combination almost as combustible as the triad of protagonists trudging around in the mysteries dreamed up by Craig Rice. Admittedly, it's not as surrealistic or humorous as some of the more memorable efforts from the Queen of Screwball Mysteries, but the crimes are peculiar, to say the least, and the (sometimes dark) comedic patches were, at times, genuinely funny. At one point in the story, Poesiat wants to arrest Yvonne as an accomplish and turns his back to her for dramatic effect, but when his theatrical pause begins to drag on he turns around – only to find himself alone in the room with front door locked from the outside! I can definitely imagine Helene pulling a stunt like that on an unsuspecting homicide detective.

But what's this book about? And why would anyone be looking for a left leg?

This narrative opens on a rapidly darkening evening, gravid with the threat of piercing wind and lashing rain, when we find Inspector Boyarski and Brigadier Stuntvoet at the end of a game of chess – when a phone call summons the inspector to the heart of Amsterdam for a murder at the concert hall. Officially, the inspector is attached to the Harbor Police, but after sinking a gang of dope peddlers his superiors often consult him on Big City cases. But getting to the scene of the crime turns out to be as much a trial as figuring out the problems thrown at him.

On his first attempt at doing his job, the inspector boarded a taxicab only to be confronted with an unresponsive driver, but then again, you can hardly expect an animated conversation from a man who was shot moments before flopping down on the backseat of his car. Back to square one, except that Brigadier Stuntvoet is not there to take this second murder off his hands. The brigadier has disappeared and everything points to an unfortunate drowning. His second attempt was delayed when Yvonne slammed her car into his cab. Oh, and we're 10 pages into a 187 page book at this point!  

After having finally joined Commissioner Poesiat, they begin to examine the death of Jan van den Speyaert, a hapless writer, who was shot through the head after the intermission and the only thing they have to go on is an extra bullet and a crumpled newspaper with the titular ad asking for a left leg. 

These opening chapters show a lot of imagination and their explanation were, for the most part anyway, reasonable (sometimes even cleverly) explained away, but their effect were diluted when the book began to morph into a pulpy spy-thriller after the murdered cab driver was exposed as a secret service agent whose assignment consisted of locating an undercover factory – producing new kind of poisonous gas. 

One of the suspects is poisoned while locked up in prison and with his dying breath identifies his murderer as the brain behind this new weapon,“Dokter September.” The hunt for this James Bondesque-villain turns Amsterdam into a battleground: Boyarski is kidnapped and the police have to smoke a dangerous gunman from the belly of a ship.

All in all, this was an amusing, but unchallenging, read that left me wondering how this book would have turned out if the story were told in a more straightforward manner – without the trappings of spy and thriller stories. It really watered down the detective-elements and left precious little to figure out once the search for the chemical factory and Dokter September commenced. Nevertheless, it was De Hartog’s first steps in this particular field of fiction and I always try to be lenient when judging a first stab at penning a detective story. This was neither a perfect detective story nor a very original thriller, but there were enough clever ideas planted in the first half to make me curious to see what else he did with the genre and feel tempted to pick up his second book straight away, but we’ll see what I take from the shelves when I put this one back up there. 

F.R. Eckmar bibliography:

Een linkerbeen gezocht (Wanted: A Left Leg, 1935)

Spoken te koop (Spooks for Sale, 1936)

Ratten op de trap (Rats on the Stairs, 1937)

Drie dode dwergen (Three Dead Dwarfs, 1937)

De maagd en de moordenaar (The Virgin and the Killer, 1938)

My VMC2012 list: 

Een lampion voor een blinde (A Lantern for the Blind, 1973) by Bertus Aafjes

De moord op Anna Bentveld (The Murder of Anna Bentveld, 1967) by Appie Baantjer

De onbekende medespeler (The Unknown Player, 1931) by Willy Corsari
Voetstappen op de trap (Footsteps on the Stairs, 1937) by Willy Corsari

Een linkerbeen gezocht (Wanted: A Left Leg, 1935) by F.R. Eckmar

Spoken te koop (Spooks for Sale, 1936) by F.R. Eckmar
Dood in schemer (Death at Twilight, 1954) by W.H. van Eemlandt

Fantoom in Foe-lai (The Chinese Gold Murders, 1959) by Robert van Gulik

Het mysterie van St. Eustache (The Mystery of St. Eustache, 1935) by Havank

Klavertje moord (Four-Leaf Murder, 1986) by Theo Joekes

Het geheim van de tempelruïne (The Secret of the Temple Ruins, 1946) by Boekan Saja

Quadruple Quandary

"My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so."

- Sherlock Holmes ("The Red-Headed League").

Theo Joekes

Theo Joekes (1923-1999) was a Dutch journalist, (mystery) writer and politician, who's remembered, if remembered at all, for his tenure as a member of parliament – where he took his seat on June 5, 1963 and left in 1989 after withdrawing his name from the list of candidates of his party (VVD).

Joekes departure from the political scene was the result of an internal skirmish that stemmed from a report of a committee of inquiry, of which he was the vice-chairman, that looked into a shipyard that received financial aid from the government before going under and found that one of Joekes' fellow party members had lied to parliament. Apparently, there was some pressure to revise their report, but Joekes stood firm and as a punishment for his "betrayal" he was delegated to an ineligible place on the party list during the next elections. This was, however, not enough to shut this parliamentarian up and began to campaign on his own and clung to his seat for another term after garnering 285.000 preference votes – which was also good for four additional seats for his party. But don't think this was appreciated. During the next elections, his name was again assigned to an ineligible place and this lead him to the conclusion that he had arrived at the last chapter of his political career.

Lies, intrigue and death bureaucratic bullying in the political sphere of the Low Lands! Well, it must have tickled the fancy of a man who was an out-of-the-closet Anglophile with a mind that was regular fed detective stories and that he knew his classics was demonstrated in the story opening the collection under review today, Klavertje moord (Four-Leaf Murder, 1986), when an examination of the victims book closet revealed hundreds of detective novels – from Conan Doyle and Edgar Wallace to Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. 

In 1980, Joekes published his first mystery novel, entitled Moord in de ridderzaal (Murder in the Knight's Hall), in which homicide detective Con Hendrix and Clerk of the House of Representatives Elizabeth Brederode are introduced – and the latter happens to have a relationship with the former and seems to be around whenever her partner is bending over a body at a crime-scene. This is somewhat justified by giving the cases a political background, angle or ties. Making her meddling more acceptable. And yes. This also forces me to revise my conclusion that the Dutch whodunit was bare of any amateur sleuths.

Unfortunately, this semi-professional snooping couple is treated with Dutch soberness instead of the contagious buoyancy of Kelley Roos and Delano Ames, but then again, this was his last book and I have the sneaking suspicion that the short story simply was not his forte. Klavertje moord contains three shorts and one novella and the latter was definitely the best of this bunch. The descriptions of his full-length novels also sound far more interesting and appear to be seeping at the spines with imagination. His first novel, for example, takes place in the titular Knight's Hall where several MPs are crushed under a falling chandelier during the troonrede (Queen's Speech = a State of the Union with a monarch instead of a president) and that's just to warm up the plot.

Joekes' full-length mysteries will definitely be the subject for discussion in the months ahead of us, but, for now, lets take a look at the four stories that make up Klavertje moord and because there are only a handful of them, I will discuss them from best-to-worst.

De moord in het Nonnen-Gasthuis (Murder in the Nuns-Guesthouse)

In the last and longest story of this collection, Hendrix and Brederode are confronted with a suspicious death at the Nuns-Guesthouse Hospital where a young man, named Paul Bradshaw, was found in the corridor to his room – collapsed in a dead faint after overstraining himself and having pulled out a life supplying infusion (drip). Bradshaw was dating the daughter of a well-known politician, Karen Valkenier, who is surrounded with scandalous whispers of a consensual incestuous relationship with her father, Sander Valkenier. This makes it a ticklish situation and the resolution does nothing to turn the grim shadow that hang over this case into a fleeting penumbra. It's a really dark and modern crime story, but the solution has some classical trimmings that can be compared to some of Bill Pronzini's fresh approaches to the detective story (e.g. Nightcrawlers, 2005 & Savages, 2007).

Brutus in bad (Brutus in Bath)

A phone-call summons Hendrix and Brederode from their familiar setting, The Hague, to the capital, Amsterdam, where Hans van der Meer, a celebrated Shakespearean actor, decided that his bathroom was as good a place as any to shoot himself through the roof of his mouth – or so a first glance would like you to belief. Hendrix goes over the apartment and what he finds (and doesn't find) helps him to point out a murderer before calling in his (local) colleagues. Admittedly, Hendrix relied a lot on guesswork and luck, but it made for a nice and interesting story. And it was Van der Meer's book closet that was stuffed with detective novels!

Moord in de Hofvijver (Murder in the Court Pond)

A colliding mass of protesters, compiled from members of the left and right fringes of the political spectrum, provided someone with a cover needed to throw a grenade into the Trèveszaal (the Room of Treaties) and in one deafening explosion years of painstaking and expensive restorations were nullified. It's a case that should require the full attention of Hendrix and Brederode, but there’s also the matter of a dead woman in the Court Pond and the missing landlord of an Italian ice-cream sales man. Is there a connection? Joekes came up with a potentially interesting premise, blending a formal mystery with thriller elements, but came up short on both ends of that stick.

Het raadsel van Vlucht WI 641 (The Riddle of Flight WI 641)

The powers above insert Hendrix and Brederode into a sensitive hi-jacking case of a plane with a delegation of diplomats onboard, but when the plane arrives and the ransom money is dropped off they find a mortally injured pilot and a baffled cargo of passengers who were unaware of their statuses as hostages – and the mysterious hijackers seems to have literarily disappeared into thin air. Joekes, once again, sketches an interesting premise without much of a pay-off.

Overall, this was the usual mixed bag of tricks you come to expect from these collections. Some good, some bad. But on a whole, I was not overly impressed, however, I will suspend my final judgment until I have worked my way through one or two of his novels. I really want to see what he was capable of when given enough room to unravel his plots.

On a final (somewhat related) note, there’s a wooden bench in London's Hyde Park that has the following epitaph engraved in its back: "in loving memory of Theo Joekes, 1923-1999." Just thought that was interesting to note. Well, I guess this was one of those rare instances, on this blog, when the author was of more interest than the stories under review.

This is the third book reviewed for the 2012 Vintage Mystery Challenge: Dutch Delinquencies:

My VMC2012 list: 

Een lampion voor een blinde (A Lantern for the Blind, 1973) by Bertus Aafjes

De moord op Anna Bentveld (The Murder of Anna Bentveld, 1967) by Appie Baantjer

De onbekende medespeler (The Unknown Player, 1931) by Willy Corsari
Voetstappen op de trap (Footsteps on the Stairs, 1937) by Willy Corsari

Een linkerbeen gezocht (Wanted: A Left Leg, 1935) by F.R. Eckmar

Spoken te koop (Spooks for Sale, 1936) by F.R. Eckmar
Dood in schemer (Death at Twilight, 1954) by W.H. van Eemlandt

Fantoom in Foe-lai (The Chinese Gold Murders, 1959) by Robert van Gulik

Het mysterie van St. Eustache (The Mystery of St. Eustache, 1935) by Havank

Klavertje moord (Four-Leaf Murder, 1986) by Theo Joekes

Het geheim van de tempelruïne (The Secret of the Temple Ruins, 1946) by Boekan Saja

Murder in Any Language

"It's an imperfect world; always will be, as long as human beings are around. And only a fool thinks there's such a thing as a perfect crime."

- Gil Grissom (Max Allan Collin's The Killing Game, 2005)

The Boekenweek (book week), held each year in March, ever since its inception in 1932, is an annual "week" of ten days that is dedicated to Dutch literature. A well-known writer, who earned his or her place on the printed page, usually Dutch or Flemish, is asked to write a book, as a rule these are novella-length stories, that is presented as a Boekenweekgeschenk (book week gift) to everyone who purchases a book or becomes a member of a library – and in 1973 this honor was bestowed on Bertus Aafjes.

Bertus Aafjes (1914-1993) was a famed poet, novelist and world traveler, but, thanks to that peculiar sense known as hobby deformation, I always associate him with a wonderful series of historical mysteries featuring the venerable and sapient Judge Ooka – an 18th century magistrate who presided over Edo.

Before Aafjes sat down to write the book week gift, he had produced four volumes of Judge Ooka stories and was now commissioned to pen a fifth, however, there was one stipulation: it had to be adaptable for television. This left the poet of crime in somewhat of a quandary, since there were few Asian actors in the Netherlands at the time and therefore the focus of the story had to be somehow on his compatriots. Luckily, there was a stretch of time in Japanese history, known as Rangaku (Dutch learning), when the borders were as tightly closed as the door to Dr. Grimaud's study and the only Europeans who were allowed passage were Dutch traders. During those years, the Dutch enclave of Dejima was there umbilical cord to the outside world and through this contact they kept taps on the Western progress in science and technology – as well as art and literature.

Well, that takes care of one problem and resulted in Een lampion voor een blinde (A Lantern for the Blind, 1973), in which Judge Ooka is en route to Dejima to escort an envoy, De Hofstoet, from the Dutch enclave back to Edo – where they will give their homage to the Shogun. Judge Ooka is a student of Rangaku and this enabled him to communicate with the people in charge of the Dutch factory, however, his studies were not enough to fully prepare him for this meeting. Big portions of the first half of this novella concern themselves with contrasting Dutch with Japanese culture and they are engrossing if you enjoy history, but this is, after all, a detective story and soon the first problem arrives at the horizon – and it's not Commadore Perry's ship.

The last ship that arrived from Amsterdam, De Liefde, brought two heelmeesters (surgeons), the experienced Bading and the young Oranje, and one of them will be appointed as surgeon in Japan – while the other will be shipped off to a settlement in Siam. However, they both want to stay in Japan and each claimed that the other stole a letter, during their voyage, which confirmed their position as surgeon on Dejima and destroyed it. This makes it impossible to establish who's telling the truth and the decision is now up to the Opperhoofd, Captain Simon Slingeland, nicknamed The Red Oni from Holland, when they reach Edo, but the silent rivalry between the surgeons has set the tone for their journey – and during one of their first dinners Ooka makes a terrible mistake that will result in the death of one of them.

One night, Ooka tells them how he hanged two murderers on the eye-witness testimony of a blind woman and this immediately prompted an observation from the surgeons how they could've committed the perfect murder – if only they had known that the woman was blind. The judge realizes that he has made a horrible mistake, but is unable to prevent a murder. Nevertheless, when it happens even he's surprised at the devilish ingenuity on the part of the killer. It's not Oranje or Bading who was felled with a bullet, but the Opperhoofd, Slingeland, and Bading accuse Oranje of the foul deed backed up with the testimony of a blind maid. 

The girl was unable to understand what was said before the shot was fired, since they spoke Dutch, but she recognized the voice and mannerism of Oranje. You can probably guess what scheme Bading had in mind, but the best part is that nobody was really fooled and knew, or suspects, what really happened. But it's impossible to proof. The perfect crime! And the only disappointing part of the story is, perhaps, that Ooka resorted to a bluff to ensnarl the murderer instead of hatching one his Machiavellian traps, but let's not split hairs over a minor imperfection in an otherwise engrossing and charming story. 

Een lampion voor een blinde is not only one of my favorite Dutch detective stories, but also one of the best inverted mysteries, set during a very interesting period in history, I read and deserves to be translated – along side all those wonderful short stories.

This is the second book reviewed for the 2012 Vintage Mystery Challenge: Dutch Delinquencies:

My VMC2012 list: 

Een lampion voor een blinde (A Lantern for the Blind, 1973) by Bertus Aafjes

De moord op Anna Bentveld (The Murder of Anna Bentveld, 1967) by Appie Baantjer

De onbekende medespeler (The Unknown Player, 1931) by Willy Corsari
Voetstappen op de trap (Footsteps on the Stairs, 1937) by Willy Corsari

Een linkerbeen gezocht (Wanted: A Left Leg, 1935) by F.R. Eckmar

Spoken te koop (Spooks for Sale, 1936) by F.R. Eckmar
Dood in schemer (Death at Twilight, 1954) by W.H. van Eemlandt

Fantoom in Foe-lai (The Chinese Gold Murders, 1959) by Robert van Gulik

Het mysterie van St. Eustache (The Mystery of St. Eustache, 1935) by Havank

Klavertje moord (Four-Leaf Murder, 1986) by Theo Joekes

Het geheim van de tempelruïne (The Secret of the Temple Ruins, 1946) by Boekan Saja

I also reviewed one of the short story collections in this series, which you can read here.

When the Past Wears Us Down

"It appears to be an impossible crime, but there are no impossible crimes, only misunderstood crimes."

- Stanley Baum ("The Stolen Saint Simon," 2000)

"Willy Corsari" (1897-1998)

Wilhelmina Angela Douwes-Schmidt was born on December 26, 1897 in Sint-Peters-Jette (Brussels, Belgium) and drew her last breath more than a hundred years later on May 11, 1998 in Amstelveen (The Netherlands). She was brought up in an artistic family, as a daughter of an operatic father and a pianist mother, instilling a love for the performing arts from early childhood and destined her for a life in the spotlights, but it was a talent for the written word that brought her lasting fame and an international audience.

Under a fictitious name, that of Willy Corsari, she began dabbling in a variety of genres and themes, touching everything from psychological novels and stage plays to children's literary and detective stories – which were also introduced into the English, French, German, Russian, Norwegian and Danish languages. This puts her in the same league as Robert van Gulik and Appie Baantjer, whose books also scaled the language barrier into the welcoming hands of a whole new flock of readers, but neither of them, not even Van Gulik, was as classically styled as Corsari. The book I picked from her body of work, Voetstappen op de trap (Footsteps on the Stairs, 1937), to commence this Vintage Mystery Challenge of 2012, can only be described as a blend between the British whodunit, with a plot that has its roots firmly planted in the works of John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie, and the continental roman policier.

The key figure of this novel is Sir John Judge, born as Jan Rechter, who left Holland to find his luck in Britain and found it. As an entrepreneur, he put a considerable sum to his name and was even knighted for his business endeavors. Judge was also well-liked among his peers and threw money at people like candy to kids on the fifth of December, but the affluent philanthropist also harbored a darker, secretive side – one not known to his family and immediate associates but it garnered him a sworn enemy. While he was still living in his adopted homeland, a crooked man tried to kill him and were it not for the intervention of his close friend, Tjako Kiliaan, who took a bullet in the arm, he would've returned to his birthland in a casket.

But in spite of the best efforts by those celebrated men of Scotland Yard, this mysterious individual, with his crooked appearance, was never collared and once more became a fleeting shadow from Sir John Judge's apparently unmarked past, however, it infused his wife, Anja, with dreadful premonitions and visions – which persisted to haunt her restless nights even after moving back to the Netherlands. These phantasms feed her fear and whisper to her that her husband is still in danger of losing his life to an assassins bullet, but when she asks, in her desperation, Inspector Robert Lund for help all he can do for her, at that moment, is come down to their estate, De Berkenhof, and talk with her family and friends.

Inspector Lund, by the way, is the archetypical Dutch storybook detective from the pre-1960s period and comparable protagonists can be found in the mysteries from the hands of Tjalling Dix and Ben van Eysselsteijn, but Corsari might have carved the mold from which their detectives were cut. Lund is a regular homicide detective, "who looks even younger than he is," with a wife at home and got were here's now through competence and methodical police work. As I noted here, the Dutch detective story has not, as far as I am aware, an "amateur reasoner of some celebrity" or a nosy, scheming spinster who are constantly inserting themselves in murder cases or stumble over blood-spattered corpses. The detectives are always professional policemen. This has its advantages, but also its limitations. You don't have to over tax your readers credulity in order to place your detective in the middle of a murder mystery, over and over again, but on the other hand, a policeman is bound to his jurisdiction and thus limited in your settings (with exception of the occasional busman's holiday) – and our part of the genre really misses a memorable character like Sherlock Holmes.

Anyway, back to the story! The nightmarish specter, that has haunted Anja ever since the attempted murder back in England, finally seems to have reemerged and presented itself in a solid form to confront her husband, however, the only occupant of the locked study, after the door was busted open, was the body of Sir John Judge – and his murderer had dissipated as rags of mist that were blown away by a gust of wind.

The key of the door was still stuck in the lock from the inside, the windows were securely fastened and an interconnecting door was blocked, from both sides, by a bookcase stuffed with hefty tomes and a cabinet filled with porcelain. It's the condition of this sealed environment that, at first, suggests an accident, but evidence at the scene (i.e. a fresh bullet hole that can not be accounted for) indicates that his death is a murder, one that defies common sense, but a murder nonetheless.

Lund finds himself not only confronted with a death that simply could not have happened, but also with an array of suspects who obviously belong on the pages of an Agatha Christie novel. There's Sir John's overwrought wife, Anja, and his carefree friend Tjakko, but also a limb and sickly looking secretary named Philip Gardner. Lady Cochat and her 10-year-old son Allan, who seems, at first, to have the personality of an automaton and the one who heard the titular footsteps on the stairs, and the frightened Mrs. Canna – who's is foully poisoned a day after the murder and mumbled a few cryptic words before sinking into a deep coma. There are more players, of course, but listing the entire dramatis personae here seems pointless. But take it from me that a line-up of the suspects resembles a stack of cards from the board game Clue.

I never expected that there were actual Dutch detective stories, from the efflorescent era of the genre, that were this classically styled and ingeniously plotted – and even able to toy with me as if I were new to this game! I had a germ of an idea of what actually happened in that locked study, but I kept switching suspects and methods around on at least five different points in the book – which was encouraged with a barrage of twists and a false solution that told a chilling part of the actual solution. There were one or two coincidences that helped move the plot along in certain parts, but that hardly took anything away from the story and when the solution came it was a satisfying one. A nifty play on the least-likely-suspect gambit. It showed, quite clearly, that Corsari was aware what her fellow artists in crime were up to overseas and the ending of this story also impressed me as a nod and a wink at John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle.

But honesty compels me to point out two minor blotches: the third-person narrative does not read as smooth as could've been, especially during descriptive passages, and one component of the solution was withheld, but I am prepared to show leniency on that point – seeing as Lund was unaware of this, as well, and there were more than enough other clues to look at! All in all, this was an excellent read and a top-notch detective story that deserves a translation, if it hasn't been already, and if you come across one of her translated titles I can help you help you determine whether or not it's one of her detectives.

Well, that was the first book that I knocked-off the list for the VMC2012 and I think we're off to a good start. Not to mention that I can actually put a Dutch impossible crime novel on my list of favorite locked room mysteries now! 

My VMC2012 list: 

Een lampion voor een blinde (A Lantern for the Blind, 1973) by Bertus Aafjes

De moord op Anna Bentveld (The Murder of Anna Bentveld, 1967) by Appie Baantjer

De onbekende medespeler (The Unknown Player, 1931) by Willy Corsari
Voetstappen op de trap (Footsteps on the Stairs, 1937) by Willy Corsari

Een linkerbeen gezocht (Wanted: A Left Leg, 1935) by F.R. Eckmar

Spoken te koop (Spooks for Sale, 1936) by F.R. Eckmar
Dood in schemer (Death at Twilight, 1954) by W.H. van Eemlandt

Fantoom in Foe-lai (The Chinese Gold Murders, 1959) by Robert van Gulik

Het mysterie van St. Eustache (The Mystery of St. Eustache, 1935) by Havank

Klavertje moord (Four-Leaf Murder, 1986) by Theo Joekes

Het geheim van de tempelruïne (The Secret of the Temple Ruins, 1946) by Boekan Saja

Vintage Mystery Challenge 2012: Dutch Delinquencies

"Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth. Tame the dragon and the gift is yours."

- Noela Evans.

Bev's My Reader's Block plays hosts to a year-round reading tournament, which throws down the gauntlet to the entirety of the blogosphere, daring anyone with a blog to take part in one or more of the themed obstacle courses and finish an X-amount of vintage mysteries before the bells that signal the end of the twelve month time-limit cease their pealing – which is a neat way to gain more converts entice readers to take a peek over their shoulders at the rich and varied history of the detective story.

You don't have to prod me with a summons to contest with the prospect of a grand prize in order to make me pick up a vintage mystery, but nonetheless decided to take part in this parkour with a Murderous Miscellany category entitled Dutch Delinquencies. I made a selection of ten eleven novels from Dutch writers whose mysteries are, more or less, in the tradition of their American and British counterparts, however, their vintage label is not determined by a publication date but by their style – which made it difficult to exclude post-1960s titles from the list. I mean, you can't line up these delinquents without Bertus Aafjes and Appie Baantjer!

Anyway, Bev graciously allowed me to enter the competition, but without having a shot at one of the prices – which was fine with me. I only need the motivation provided by this challenge to finally immerse myself in this particular nook of the genre without any prolonged distractions (like a certain blogger infecting me with his enthusiasm for Paul Doherty).

Here's a list of compatriots that I plan to take on during this upcoming challenge:

Een lampion voor een blinde (A Lantern for the Blind, 1973) by Bertus Aafjes

De moord op Anna Bentveld (The Murder of Anna Bentveld, 1967) by Appie Baantjer

De onbekende medespeler (The Unknown Player, 1931) by Willy Corsari
Voetstappen op de trap (Footsteps on the Stairs, 1937) by Willy Corsari

Een linkerbeen gezocht (Wanted: A Left Leg, 1935) by F.R. Eckmar

Spoken te koop (Spooks for Sale, 1936) by F.R. Eckmar
Dood in schemer (Death at Twilight, 1954) by W.H. van Eemlandt

Fantoom in Foe-lai (The Chinese Gold Murders, 1959) by Robert van Gulik

Het mysterie van St. Eustache (The Mystery of St. Eustache, 1935) by Havank

Klavertje moord (Four-Leaf Murder, 1986) by Theo Joekes

Het geheim van de tempelruïne (The Secret of the Temple Ruins, 1946) by Boekan Saja

Notes:

Three of these titles will be re-reads (Aafjes, Baantjer and Van Gulik) and I have to order two of them (Van Eemlandt and Havank) before I can toss them with others on my to-be-read pile. And perhaps I will read one of Eckmar's books before 2012, but I already have a replacement lined up if that happens.

Tjalling Dix's Een kogel voor oedipus (A Bullet for Oedipus, 1954) has been replaced with W.H. van Eemlandt's Dood in schemer (Death at Twilight). 


On January 2 2012, I added another book by Willy Corsari, reputedly a locked room mystery, to the list. 

Simon de Waal and M.P.O. Books are missing from the list because I made an effort not to include really recent titles.

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