Customer Reviews

Dekok and the Dead Harlequin

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A.C. Baantjer has written some sixty novels featuring Amsterdam's Inspector DeKok. DeKok and the Dead Harlequin, my first foray into the series, was originally published in Dutch in 1967. The English edition was released by Speck Press earlier this year. The book starts with a most intriguing puzzle. DeKok receives a note from a man who asks for an appointment, saying that he has determined to commit a murder. The murder indeed takes place, but while the visitor is in DeKok's office, so it's solution is not as obvious as one would at first suspect. The crime remains a puzzlement to the end, when DeKok reveals all to his wife and his perplexed colleague Vledder. It's the sort of crime novel in which the reader is not given all the information that DeKok has at his disposal, so that while we may have ideas about who did it, we cannot solve the crime ourselves.

The elaborate precautions taken by DeKok's note writer are what makes the story immediately interesting, yet in the end--though I don't want to give anything away--I'm not convinced that that aspect of the story quite makes sense, as if it were introduced because it was sensational rather than necessary to the plot. But I quite enjoyed my introduction to the series nonetheless. DeKok is a wonderful character--shambling and humane and imperfect and quite realistic. I imagine this won't be my last dip into the world of Amsterdam's criminal element.

-- Debra Hamel

Inspector DeKok, with a kohk, apparently is one of the longer-running mystery series, with at least 60 novels so far. It is among the more popular crime novels in The Netherlands and is the basis for a long-standing TV series as well. Speck Press, an imprint of Fulcrum Publishing, has stated that it is committed to printing the entire series for United States readers.

In this novel, DeKok and his foil-sidekick, Vledder, encounter a most unusual situation. An accountant writes to ask for an appointment, and when he arrives he requests that DeKok help him plan the perfect murder, since he is planning on killing someone. .He, moreover, offers to admit to the murder after the fact.

Later, two murders take place in the same hotel room, but DeKok's visitor has an absolute alibi: he was in the Inspector's presence each time. Each victim was found lying on the floor, stretched out like a harlequin. From that point we are treated to a most unusual police procedure, following the somewhat incongruous lines of thought reflecting DeKok's mental processes.

The publisher is to be congratulated for bringing this gem of a series to the United States, and readers have much to look forward to in the future. Apparently, the next book will be in hardcover for a July publication date, entitled "DeKok and the Mask of Death."