The Sergeant's Cat

Zusatztext Praise for Janwillem van de Wetering "Masterly Zen mysteries." — The New York Times Book Review “Before he’s done! van de Wetering will have his say on ghettos! pornography! capitalism! est! Gurdjieff! and zero . . . The first modernist detective. To row on his dream canal! to be followed by his symbolic turtle! is to be more than disconcerted; it is to be ambushed.” — Vanity Fair “Engaging . . . The policemen are as quirky and complicated as the criminals.” — The Washington Post “What Simenon might have done if Albert Camus had sublet his skull.” —John Leonard Informationen zum Autor Janwillem van de Wetering (1931–2008) was born and raised in Rotterdam, but lived most recently in Surry, Maine. He served as a member of the Amsterdam Special Constabulary and was once a Zen Buddhist monk. He is renowned for his detective fiction, including Outsider in Amsterdam ; The Corpse on the Dike ; The Japanese Corpse ; The Maine Massacre , which garnered him the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière; and ten other books in the Amsterdam Cops series. Klappentext A collection of 13 short stories spanning two decades in the lives of van de Wetering's Amsterdam Cops Amsterdam isn't exactly a hotbed of violent crime, but wrongdoing does occur, and the most bizarre cases tend to be passed to Grijpstra and de Gier. In one they investigate the death of a handsome oceanographer whose corpse is found amidst his tanks of shiny living mussels. In another they strong-arm a brutal crime lord whose henchman threatens the sergeant's cat. Yet another leads them to uncover a most unusual murder weapon: a chocolate Easter bunny. With the curious blend of wit and the macabre readers have come to expect from the pen of Janwillem van de Wetering, the Amsterdam Cops have a way of seeing to it that justice, ultimately, is done.An excerpt from the story "The Deadly Egg"   The siren of the tiny dented Volkswagen shrieked forlornly between the naked trees of the Amsterdam Forest, the city’s largest park, set on its southern edge: several square miles of willows, poplars, and alders growing wild, surrounding ponds and lining paths. The paths were restricted to pedestrians and cyclists, but the Volkswagen had ignored the many no-entry signs quite legally, for the vehicle belonged to the Municipal Police and more especially to its Criminal Investigation Department, or Murder Brigade. Even so, it looked lost and its howl seemed defensive.       It was Easter Sunday and it was raining, and the car’s two occupants, Detective-Adjutant Grijpstra and Detective-Sergeant de Gier, sat hunched in their overcoats, watching the squeaky, rusted wipers trying to deal with the steady drizzle. The car should have been junked some years before, but the adjutant had lost the form that would have done away with his aging transport, lost it on purpose and with the sergeant’s consent. They had grown fond of the Volkswagen, of its shabbiness and its ability to melt into traffic.      But they weren’t fond of the car now. The heater didn’t work, it was cold, and it was early. Not yet nine o’clock on a Sunday is early, especially when the Sunday is Easter. Technically, they were both off duty, but they had been telephoned out of warm beds by Headquarters’ communications room. A dead man was dangling from a branch in the forest; please, would they care to have a look him?      Grijpstra’s stubby index finger silenced the siren. They had followed several miles of winding paths so far and hadn’t come across anything alive except tall blue herons, fishing in the ponds and moats and flapping away slowly when the car came too close for their comfort.      “You know who reported the corpse? I wasn’t awake when the communications room talked to me. ”      De Gier had been smoking silently. His ha...

Product details

• Authors: Janwillem van de Wetering, Janwillem van de Wetering
• Publisher: Soho Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 30.09.2015
• EAN: 9781616956981
• ISBN: 978-1-61695-698-1
• Dimensions: 128 mm x 191 mm x 20 mm
• Series: Amsterdam Cops; Amsterdam Cops
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense