A couple of weeks ago I came across one of the movies based on Baantjer's work and realized that I'd never read anything by one of the world's bestselling mystery writers -- a situation I should obviously redress. I assumed there'd be a few of his novels in the local library; in the end I obtained this one through inter-library loan.

A man is found dead propped against, as you'll guess, a church wall in Amsterdam; at first it's thought he might have died naturally, but very soon it's realized this is a case of murder. Inspectors DeKok and his sidekick Vledder unravel what proves to be a fiendishly complicated tapestry of deceit, corruption, greed, false identification, further murders and premature assumptions before the mystery is solved and various killers brought to book. Everything rattles along at a jolly pace, even though the translation isn't marvelous and the copyediting and proofreading are execrable. I enjoyed the book enough on a good-for-a-bus-ride level but really it was the lightest of light reading: there was nothing to arouse the passions or the intellect.

In the Dutch originals the veteran detective is called De Cock, and a running joke is that, whenever introducing himself to someone, he spells it out -- C-O-C-K. Apparently this was regarded as unacceptably saucy for the anglophone world, and so the translations render his name DeKok and he spells it out K-O-K. ( )

A corpse is found and even though it looks natural, it is found that the man has been murdered. Is is Archibald Manefeldt, or is it not. A fun book to read, and DeKok continues to be like Columbo, and Clouseau, very entertaining. ( )