Word: grijpstra
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...However, his stories are still set, with occasional departures (The Japanese Corpse), in Amsterdam, where his sleuths have taken over the turf once occupied by Nicolas Freeling's late, lamented Inspector Van der Valk. Van de Wetering's latest Dutch treat, starring the familiar trio of Detectives Grijpstra and de Gier and their commissaris, is cerebral, comradely and sensual, within the generous Hollander dollops that make KLM a perennially popular airline...
...Dutchman, Van de Wetering is a student of Zen who has spent time in a Japanese monastery and now lives in America. His new book draws on his knowledge of Japan. In outline the plot is very conventional. The commissaris and his two assistants, Adjutant Grijpstra and Sergeant De Gier, are required to search out and destroy a Japanese connection that supplies drugs and stolen art to Amsterdam. The villains are the yakusa, Japan's Mafia, who of course have their own extralegal culture with its warriors, taboos, codes and pretty girls...
Fortunately the author has a genuine gift for characterization. Grijpstra is something of a slob mismarried to another slob of grotesque dimension who stares at TV all day and wears innumerable pin curlers to bed. De Gier is a romantic who is too realistic to marry. He prefers the company of his flute and his neurotic Siamese cat, Oliver...
Take the sleuths on the case. Sergeant De Grier and Adjutant Grijpstra cannot claim the instinct for violence or the deductive brilliance that makes for popular detectives. But the two plainclothesmen on the Amsterdam police force are far from plain. As they doggedly pursue their "eternal search" for "who knows something," they find sweetness in old whores, humor in dachshunds, beauty in drab streets...
...seems guilty only of an act of reason. In the end, just desserts are separated from legal justice. Van de Wetering, writing with pace, freshness and laconic precision, clearly relishes the ironies. Nor is he done with them. Happily, he promises to bring back the appealing De Grier and Grijpstra in sequels to confront more of life's mysteries...
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