During a random break-in, three heroin addicts discover the corpse of banker Martin Ijsbreker. They arrange his death to look like a suicide and flee with his valuables, but are found dead of an overdose the next day. The investigating officer dismissed their deaths as an accident, but the commis...
While in the neighborhood investigating a pet poisoner, Grijpstra and de Gier of the Amsterdam police are called to the home of a wealthy, middle-aged woman, the former lover of a man known only as "The Baboon," when her body turns up in her garden.
The first half of the story has been released as a stand alone story for celebrating the annual Dutch Book week, and was a present for those readers who spend an x-amount on books. And as such was my first time reading JW van de Wetering.This story starts with the policemen Karate (nickname becau...
I remember Janwillem van de Vetering as one of the authors of whose I overdosed by the time I was 13. Yes, I never read any books intended for the young people. It went from fairytales to some adventure books, which were too predictable and boring, to Agatha Christie and books towards thrillers f...
Maria van Buren, a beautiful, high-class prostitute, is found dead with a knife in her back in her houseboat on an Amsterdam canal. Grijpstra and de Gier must solve the murder. Her tony clients all have sound alibis. Before the murderer is caught, the detectives and their commissaris will investi...
The thirteenth Amsterdam Cops mystery The commissaris is about to retire from the Amsterdam police force when volunteer officer Johan Termeer approaches him for help. Johan fears his elderly uncle has been murdered in faraway New York, the corpse found decimated by animals in Central Park. The c...
The fifth Amsterdam Cops mysteryA beautiful waitress at Amsterdam’s most elegant Japanese restaurant reports that her boyfriend, a Japanese art dealer, is missing. The police search throughout the Netherlands and finally locate a corpse. But to find the killer, the commissaris and de Gier must tr...
Retired Amsterdam policeman Grijpstra receives a frantic late-night phone call from his old partner, de Gier—now living on an island near Jameson, Maine—who fears he may have accidentally killed his girlfriend. He is being blackmailed and can’t remember if he did it; he was just too drunk. Would ...
It took me 31 years to finish Janwillem van de Wetering's "The Corpse on the Dike". It was the first book that I started reading when I landed in the U.S. in 1982. I could not get past the first 20 pages at that time, and the book had to wait until now. Well, it could have waited longer - it is n...
On a quiet street in downtown Amsterdam, the founder of a new religious society/commune—a group that calls itself “Hindist” and mixes elements of various “Eastern” traditions—is found hanging from a ceiling beam. Detective-Adjutant Gripstra and Sergeant de Gier of the Amsterdam police are sent to...
A riot has erupted in New Market Square, transforming the normally sedate streets of Amsterdam into a mass of angry protesters. So when the body of the “King” of the local street market is found in his house with his head bashed in, the police are puzzled. The adjoining street has been closed off...
The accidental death of his brother-in-law sends the commissaris to the secluded town of Jameson, Maine. De Gier goes along to see the United States. But there has been a sinister pattern of deaths in the area, and the two find themselves neck-deep in a murder investigation involving shady real e...
The fourteenth Amsterdam Cops MysteryRetired policemen Grijpstra and de Gier are being blackmailed. The threat is a serious one: to set the income tax authority on them. The blackmailers, a wealthy yacht owner and his son, want them to investigate the mysterious hijacking of a supertanker’s entir...
The ninth Amsterdam Cops mystery Sergeant de Gier spots a vulture at the scene of a murder in Amsterdam’s red light district. The victim, a despicable and widely hated pimp, is now only a police matter to be disposed of with typical Dutch tidiness. However, once Grijpstra, de Gier and the canny ...
"Dear?" The telephone said nothing. "Are you still there?" "I am," his wife said, "and so are the Belgian endives. You ordered them, remember? You absolutely had to eat baked Belgian endives tonight. Any idea about the price of Belgian endives?" "We could eat them tomorrow...
A disorganized swirl of bobbing objects remained. Grijpstra saw the bottletops, condoms, beer cans, and torn stems of waterweeds taking position in a more or less defined circle that moved to the quayside, and he cursed. Then he jumped. But he jumped away from the river and when he landed he ran....