Death Of A Hawker by JanWillem van de Wetering is a winning mystery in a series called Amsterdam Cops. There are 15 in the series, and Death Of A Hawker is number four.
I found a trade paperback version in a used bookstore in Mexico. It is a Soho Crime edition, who publish mysteries from international writers such as Cara Black (Aimee Leduc Parisian detective series) and Akimitsu Takagi (Honeymoon To Nowhere). With their distinctive spine, Soho Crime novels jump off the shelf and are always recommended. It's a great way to discover a new author, as I have never been disappointed in a Soho Crime title.
Adjutant-Detective Henk Grijpstra and Detective-Sergeant Rinus de Gier are partners in the Amsterdam police force murder brigade, and are called by a woman when her brother has been murdered. It's a case with no visible weapon and police were patrolling outside the home the whole time due to a riotous city protest. He was an outspoken "hawker" of fabrics at a local market and Grijpstra and deGier set about the investigation. The murder seems beside the point, however, as they meet the sister, the lodger, various people at the market, and Elizabeth, who lives on a houseboat nearby.
This novel was a complete surprise to me as I was somehow expecting something else. I trusted the Soho title would be good, but from a cursory glance at the cover, thought it was about police politics or the drug trade in 1970's Amsterdam. I found myself suddenly captivated by the writing and the book, and couldn't put it down. JanWillem has a way of telling you what is going on by the reactions of the characters as it happens. It was surprising many times, and I was constantly laughing out loud. There is a scene where they interview the potential witness Elizabeth on her houseboat, and it was only at the end of the interview where her history is revealed. I'm not going to spoil it for when you read it, but several times there are revelations about characters that made me re-read back a few pages. It's fun to find a book where everything isn't telegraphed out for you, you can't see the turn in the road.
They have a meeting at a local bar, which turns out to be the shop of a prostitute. Her character is drawn by the reactions of the men around her and her saucy comments, and we get a good sense of the character of Grijpstra and deGier as well. They are good cops, but also behave like big kids sometimes. When a set of drums mysteriously appears at the station, Grijpstra appropriated them to practice on.
DeGier is the younger partner, a dreamer and thinker with Zen tendencies on life. He carries a small flute, and plays with Grijpstra's drums sometimes.
They end up going undercover to sell fabrics in the market, and the observations about the people of Amsterdam are priceless. The whole book is about the characters they meet and their side stories, so much so that it isn't until the last few chapters that the investigation gets serious for the finale. Are they successful in finding the murderer? I'll let you read it to find out.
JanWillem has lived in South Africa, Japan, London, Columbia, Peru, Australia, Amsterdam and Maine. When he was in his twenties, he studied Zen Buddhism under a master in the Japanese monastery Daitoku-Ji, which he wrote about in his book, An Empty Mirror. His experiences in Zen surely inform the outlook of his characters and the tone of his writing. I was so pleased to find this comic detective novel that I looked for and bought the first of the series Outsider In Amsterdam.
I'm looking forward to hanging out again with Grijpstra and deGier.
2003 / Paperback / 221 pages
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