Inspector DeKok is a seasoned police detective in Amsterdam. In a pleasant twist, he is not grumpy, mundane, wretched, morose, grizzled, or an alcoholic. Just wise and sometimes quiet in the face of his younger partner. The younger detective, unfortunately, is all-too-obviously constructed for ease of the story...all we know about the partner is that he (conveniently) loves to do police reports and is always typing these up so DeKok doesn't have to, jumps to obvious and semi-obvious conclusions as the reader might develop theories on the whodunit to which DeKok can show unexplained confident disagreement. And the foil can become emotional to highlight DeKok's quiet confidence.

In the book, there is a struggle between individuals who believe a small number of their female relatives, friends, or girlfriends have visited a particular hospital never to be heard from again, and hospital staff who argue these women never arrived. it is truly a spooky and disturbing concept to hear the epitomes of professionalism and care deny that the inpatients did not exist. The secondary characters are cut-outs except for one art forger and DeKok's supervisor takes an interesting angle and provides a subtle and atypical detective's boss.

The book was a tight, amazingly fast read. No recounting of dreams, musings, sentimental histories, drawn-out explanations of past cases or DeKok's personal life. Just solving a mystery, plain and simple. ( )

http://www.book-blog.com/2009/09/baantjer-ac-dekok-and-the-mask-of-death.html ( )