Customer Reviews

Dekok and Murder on the Menu

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A wonderful introduction to the DeKok series. In this book we meet Inspector DeKok of the Amsterdam Police for the first time, along with his colleague, Vledder.
DeKok is a veteran detective, somewhat bemused by modern technology and saddened by the increase in serious crime in the modern day (this book was first published in Holland in 1990). His much younger assistant, Dick Vledder, knows no gentler world and is keen to follow up on the clues that his boss, the grey sleuth, discovers.
The story starts when a schoolboy walks into their office with written evidence that could close a year-old murder case, the shooting of a drugs syndicate boss. Of course the case turns out to be far more complicated and the number of suspects increases. Another syndicate member is murdered in the same way and we follow the detectives through the interconnecting relationships of the four syndicate members until the real murderer is found. The seamy side of Amsterdam comes to life as they walk or drive through the city, interacting with all parts of modern society and the evils that accompany them.
Baantjer packs a lot of plot and detail into 180 pages and the depth of characterization is impressive. A.C. Baantjer is the most widely read author in Holland and it is no surprise to find that he was an Inspector of Police, so smoothly is his writing of police procedure.
If you like your mysteries with a taste of cynical humor, this book is for you. It left me wanting to get the next in the series right away.

I hoped that the de KoK series might be as good as Janwillem Van De Vetering's tales of Grijpstra and de Geir. Both are written by former police officers, and both reportedly have been wildly popular in the Netherlands. If this relatively slim volume is typical of its series, it is not even close. First, it may be the fault of the translation, but the prose seems so stilted as to hamper substantially the ability of the reader to become immersed in the story. Second, this volume at least doesn't provide all that much in the way of character development, or the creation of characters of particular appeal. The series must be very attractive in the original Dutch, but I'd avoid it in its current translations.