Customer Reviews

CORPSE ON THE DIKE, THE (Soho Crime)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I ran into this author by accident, browsing in the mystery category, and I am delighted that I did. This is the second book I've read from the Amsterdam Cops series, and I plan to read them all! The characters are people you'd like to get to know -- believable and quirky. The plot of this particular book takes the reader inside the physical geography of Amsterdam as well as into the minds and world views of the detectives. A man who seems to have no connection to anyone else has been murdered in a run-down house along a city canal. The detectives weave in and out of the Dutch underworld to find the guilty parties. Absolutely delightful and mysterious

I didn't know what to expect, as this was my first introduction to this author or any dutch author for that matter.

This book grabs you and won't let go until the very end. Even then it is reluctant. You immeadiately bond with the two qwirky detectives as they discover clues concerning a rare homicide in Amsterdam, and they discover themselves.

Outstanding, interesting, offbeat and just plain fun. Worth the time.

The Corpse on the Dyke was the very first of the Amsterdam Cops series that I read, initially intrigued on the extremely pulpy title! This was in the 1970s and the first copy I bought was used. I was hooked and read all of them. I love the characters, particularly the Commisaris, and the tales progress in such an unconventional way. The conversations that take place are always worthwhile! I am presently reading them all again, loving them as much as I did 25 years ago. They are timeless.

This is a first rate murder mystery by Janwillem van de Wetering that features the quirky and humorous detective team of Sergeant de Gier and Adjutant-Detective Gripstra. It's a classic in that was published in the pre-cellphone era (1976), so all of the police procedural work is done by driving around the city (Amsterdam here) or on foot. This story features one of the city's more interesting neighborhoods--an outer-ring dike with a kind of hippy population that is often on the wrong side of the law--even the very relaxed Dutch law that governs Amsterdam.

In "The Corpse...", a young man is found murdered in his modest house as coppers de Gier and Gripstra are on stakeout nearby. The victim had no enemies and very few friends, so a motive for the crime is not obvious. The detective duo and colleagues start down the serpentine trail to resolution of the case and stumble into some interesting people and felonies along the way.

This story succeeds on several levels, but the interactions between the principal protagonists and the book's other characters are entertaining and push the tale along at a good pace. The overall plot and ending have a kind of Maigret feel to them, which ties them to money and greed--a bad human chemistry equation.

This is a fine book in an excellent series. Recommended.

Within just a page or two of one of his books, the late Janwillem Wetering transports me back to that glorious city of Amsterdam and I get a boost of nostalgia and affection for both the city and his strong, quirky and nearly-believable characters.

Of course memory plays tricks and I am sure that the Amsterdam I knew was never quite so intriguingly zen-religious and metaphysical as the Commissaris feels, or as criminally exciting as the Adjutant and Sergeants always discover. But I can believe that even today the Dutch police are shocked and repulsed to find guns on the streets, let alone one being used in the execution of a crime.

In Corpse on the Dike, the third in Wetering's series about the Dutch Detectives Grijpstra and de Gier, the plot opens not only with a gun, but a murder - by a crack-shot. The story unfolds through Wetering's usual clever and misleading scenarios and we are enticed then repelled by his crooked characters, and we are led further down the `garden paths' of his plot twists by his evocative descriptions of this beautiful city of green shaded gravel walks along canal and dike.

The cops, of course, get their villains, the gardens are tended, the cats fed, and justice is served along with those small, fragrant, Dutch cigars and deliciously strong Dutch coffee. The lightest fiction that I read, in fact about the only Roman books I can open these days, the Dutch detective series of Wetering continues to please with its impish humor and addictive atmosphere - and great cops of course!

I purchased this title in the Kindle edition. The book is very good, and I love the author, but the Kindle book has far too many errors for something that cost almost ten dollars. I have discovered errors on nearly every page, most usually the substitution of the letter 'd' for 't'. Some words are pure gibberish.

I agree with the other reviewer who said that the translation of this book is sorely lacking. There are multiple examples of poor (or really, lack of) translation of Dutch words into English. I find this interesting since the author wrote in both English and Dutch and lived in the USA at the end of his life. You would think that Amazon could provide an E-Book with a decent translation. I doubt that the printed version has these errors, and if I am paying as much for the E-Book as for the printed version, I would expect the quality to be equivalent.

Fortunately, the translation problems don't really keep you from understanding the story and it is a clever addition to the Dutch detective novels. It does help to have a Dutch - English dictionary handy, however.

amazon should refund the price of this novel to anyone "dupped"into paying for it. As it says in this book "mat's the trouble"-THE TRANSLATION IS HORRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

I really enjoy the way that Van De Wetering handles the police procedural from the Dutch POV. Like Freeling and Simenon, his characters tend to live more in the lives of the commonplace than exploring sensational serial murders.

In this novel, a virtual hermit is killed by a single shot-- very un-Dutch in a country where firearms are so controlled. It takes you through the underbelly of Amsterdam into houses of prostitution, the world of grey market electronics, and into the house of a flamboyant possible villain named Cat.

Not my favorite Grijpstra and de Gier (that honor still goes to _Death of a Hawker_) but still a great example of the series.