Janwillem van de Wetering's fourteenth Amsterdam Cops novel finds Grijpstra, de Gier, and the commissaris blackmailed into investigating the mysterious hijacking of a supertanker's entire cargo. The adventure takes them to Key West and to the former Dutch colonies of Aruba and St. Eustatius in search of the missing oil and the villains who have killed more than once to protect their loot.
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In a shabby bar on Aruba, a retired Dutch police commissioner eats stewed pears, talks about Gabriel García Márquez with a cab driver and a prostitute, and listens to a four-man percussion band play what he recognizes as "a Bach cantata he had once heard in Vienna." This can only be Janwillem van de Wetering territory--that slightly surreal world stretching from Amsterdam to Maine that has grown to include Key West, Florida, and various portions of the Caribbean. Ex-Amsterdam cops Grijpstra and de Gier have now gone private, seeking to avoid work while their former commissioner manages the huge cache of drug money they stumbled on and appropriated. Threats and cajolery send them reluctantly off to search for the thieves who siphoned a cargo of oil bound for Cuba from a tanker owned by a fascinatingly obnoxious father-and-son team out of Rotterdam. The titular parrot, by the way, is a bar in Key West, where lap dancing and information are served up along with the multicolored drinks. Soho Press has also published quality paperback editions of two earlier van de Wetering books: Hard Rain and The Rattle-Rat.
Review
Detectives Grijpstra and De Gier, the less than perfect cops from Amsterdam, are as wry and eccentric as always in their 14th adventure together.... Van De Wetering's trademarks--jazz references and Zen wisdom--pepper this quirky crime novel. -- Entertainment Weekly
In the end, sound philosophy prevails ("Enough is too much," de Grier decides. "Poor is better."), but not before a shamelessly materialistic good time is had by all. -- The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio
In the end, sound philosophy prevails ("Enough is too much," de Grier decides. "Poor is better."), but not before a shamelessly materialistic good time is had by all. -- The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Holy Krips they have done it again.",
By
This review is from: The Perfidious Parrot (Hardcover)
The three Amstelteers have raced, well more like meandered, from Vondel Park to the Antilles via Key West on a case with a surprising oily twist. In business on their own, G&G, under the watchful eye of Henkieluvvie uncover a clever plot to make oil disappear. Their biggest concern is that the most PERFIDIOUS outlaw of all "the Amsterdam Tax man" may get their loot if they do not get to work. Perifidious, deceitful, faithless, untrustworthy. In depth story telling with the tongue in cheek attitude that JanWillem does so well. The characters stay in line, no surprises, as it should be. At the end their conscience is relieved because of the actions of their mentor.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not the best in the series,
By tangofan (Mountain View, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Perfidious Parrot (Hardcover)
This book from the Grijpstra/de Gier series has the three protagonists reluctantly researching the theft of the load of an oil tanker. Reluctantly, because their clients - a multimillionaire father and son team - have threatened them with the tax man and with various other means, before the three accept. Once they do accept, the events happen mostly in Key West and various parts of the Caribbean.
I tried to like this book a lot, after all I tremendously enjoyed most of the other novels from this series, but I started losing interest after the first half of the book. I did finish the book, but I had less pleasure reading it than all the other ones in the series.
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