Death of a Hawker by JanWillem van de Wetering

Death Of A Hawker by JanWillem van de Wetering is a winning mystery in a series called Amsterdam Cops. There are fourteen in the series, and Death Of A Hawker is number four.

Adjutant-Detective Henk Grijpstra and Detective-Sergeant Rinus de Gier are partners in the Amsterdam police force murder brigade. A woman calls about the murder of her brother - a case with no visible weapon and police patrolling outside the home the whole time due to a riotous city protest. He was an outspoken 'hawker' of fabrics at a local market. The murder seems beside the point, however, as Grijpstra and de Gier meet the sister, the lodger, various people at the market, and Elizabeth, who lives on a houseboat.

This novel was a complete surprise to me. I was suddenly captivated by the writing and couldn't put it down. JanWillem has a way of moving the plot through the reactions of the characters. It was disarming many times, and I was constantly laughing out loud. When they interview the potential witness Elizabeth on her houseboat, it was only at the end that her history is revealed. Several times there are revelations about characters that made me re-read 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 meet at a local bar, which turns out to be the shop of a prostitute, where her character is drawn by the reactions of the men around her and her saucy comments. We get a good sense of Grijpstra and deGier as well. They are good cops but behave like big kids.

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 go undercover to sell fabrics in the market, and their observations about Amsterdam are priceless. The whole book is so much about the characters they meet 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, Colombia, Peru, Australia, Amsterdam, and Maine. He studied Zen Buddhism in his twenties 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 tone of his writing.

I'm looking forward to hanging out again with Grijpstra and De Gier.

2003 / Paperback / 221 pages