Message in a Bottle

"Everything has a beginning and an end. Life is just a cycle of starts and stops. There are ends we don't desire, but they're inevitable, we have to face them. It's what being human is all about."

- Jet Black (Cowboy Bebop)

First of all, I want to beg your forgiveness for indulging, three times in the span of four weeks, in those pesky, untranslated detective stories, but Cor Docter has captured my fascination and this review will round out the trilogy of books featuring Commissioner Daan Vissering – a kind and intelligent policeman. Even more good news, I have in my possession a little known, disregarded locked room mystery from the 1930s and it's up next, but for the time being, bear with me as I babble about one more of these books.  

Now that I have read all three volumes in this series, I understand what Docter set-out to do with them and it's an effort that I very much appreciate: Droeve poedel in Delfshaven (Melancholic Poodle in Delfshaven, 1970) was a Grand Whodunit in the tradition of Agatha Christie, Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970) re-opened John Dickson Carr's beloved Locked Room Mystery for business and Rein geheim op rijksweg 13 (Pure Secrecy on Highway 13, 1971) mimics the signature trademark of Ellery Queen, the Dying Message. However, as mentioned before in these reviews, they're hardly throwbacks, but more of an overhaul that resettles them in the modern world of the early 1970s – populated with mostly working and lower class people who are caught in the meshes of intrigue.

Highway 13 was one of the busiest highways of the country and there’s always someone traveling down that road, no matter what hour of the day it is, which makes the plan of two petty thieves, Sander Wils and Peter Ruivenvoorde, all the more audacious. They want to strip a delivery van, abandoned on the emergency lane, of its valuable parts, but what they find in the back of the car throws a spoke in their wheels: slumped between scattered protest signs there’s the body of a man, hit over the head, and one hand resting in an open canister of red paint. On the inside of the van the dying man had scrawled "16NK2-" and it’s definitely a sign that Vissering's plan for Charles Dickens-style Christmas is in jeopardy. The scene of the crime also provided me with the post title, because the stranded van, containing the dead man's message, reminded me of a bottle that had just drifted on shore after an exhausting journey – with the lights and sound of passing cars standing in for the murmur of the sea and a cone of light from a nearby lighthouse. I thought it was an interesting image.

The thorough investigation of Vissering and his men uncover a number of plot threads that run in various directions, but still appear to be connected to the body in the van. There are the signs protesting the pollution of the air with garish slogans and this turns up a second death, a suicide of the wife of one of the members of a protest group, and a glass of diluted bleach is one of the key clues in this little side puzzle. You need a piece of trivial, household knowledge from this particular period to completely solve it, but it's actually quite clever and could've easily been used to give a satisfying explanation to a locked room scenario that turns out to be nothing more than a simple suicide. Docter only had to let Ella van der Klup jump from an open window inside her locked apartment, instead from the gallery outside, with her husband snoozing in the other room.

Vissering also has to tangle with "Boere-Bram," a Lombard, of sorts, of scrap metal and junk, who has a link with the murdered man, who turns out to be the straight up brother of a convicted criminal who has stashed away his loot, hundred fifty thousand guilders, as a nest egg for when he gets out – which is sooner than everyone expected! There’s also an old, mysterious man, named Siem Bijl, bumping into Vissering wherever the investigation takes him and a German bayonet is also thrust into the case. As to be expected by now, Docter pulls off a conclusion as classical as it's satisfying. It's like the back blurb said, "This time no Carter Dickson effects, but 'keys' that are reminiscent of the best plots of Ellery Queen, Peter Quentin (sic) or the immortal Dorothy Sayers.”

Lastly, I should mention that Pure Secrecy is also very strong in its commentary on modern society and its condemnation of the annexation of Overschie by Rotterdam – polluted and defaced in the process. Highway 13 was carved right through it and "housing barracks" (i.e. flats) tore the old atmosphere and community asunder. Docter already warned and apologized in his introduction that his description of the then present-day Overschie would be a very colored one – because the old Overschie was very dear to his heart.

Docter's detective novels may be steeped in old traditions, but he made a valiant effort at updating them to modern times and, more often than not, succeeded in doing so and this  earned himself a place among the ranks of post-GAD writers who proved the old adage that a classic never goes out of style.

The Chesterton-Effect

"You had those typical neighborhood murder cases, with the remarkable intimacy of a John Dickson Carr story or Agatha Christie's train murder... This seemed such a closed ward murder, bound to the invisible walls of the rayon."

- Commissioner Daan Vissering (Droeve poedel in Delfshaven, 1970)

Earlier this month, I reviewed Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970) by Cor Docter, a pulp writer who had a trilogy of full-fledged detective novels to his credit that merged the style of the Dutch topographical police story with the type of fantastic plots usually found in the most imaginative works of John Dickson Carr and Ellery Queen, and flung in an seemingly impossible situation for good measure. Needless to say, I was intrigued, even if some parts of the solution gave pause for thought, and now I feel even more drawn to his work after finishing Droeve poedel in Delfshaven (Melancholic Poodle in Delfshaven, 1970).

Melancholic Poodle in Delfshaven opens with the muffled howls of a dog, muzzle smeared with blood and a trail of identical substance leading to the doorsteps of a house abandoned by its owner. Commissioner Daan Vissering is holding the leash of the investigation and he and his team begin to sniff around for clues.

The missing homeowner is one Gerrit Vledser, a shady moneylender, who, according to the evidence, was hit over the head with the dog’s food bowl – before he was either taken away or fled from his attacker(s). They find a hand drawn map, with markings, and Vissering drags information from the neighbor that includes shreds of a heated conversation, the time Vledser may have been hit and two young men who associated with him. More than enough to go on, but other problems are emerging that ask for the commissioner's attention.

Exploding fireworks cloak the statue of Admiral Piet Hein in smoke, noise and confusion. Somewhere else, an exploding smoke bomb has the same effect. Senseless pranks or is there a darker meaning? Vissering has his own thoughts about it and suspects a connection, which is confirmed when the young men turn up and knock one of his men, Grijphand, into the hospital. And before long, Vledser turns up again. Behind the statue of Van 't Hoff. His head caved in... again!

Scene of the Crime: Van 't Hoff statue

Melancholic Poodle progresses in the same, absolutely delightful, way as Cold Woman, thickening the plot with each succeeding chapter, however, I found this to be less of a throwback than the other one – which dribbed with the influences from Anthony Abbot, John Dickson Carr and S.S. van Dine. Not that I have any complaints about that, but the publisher advertised this series as classic detective stories reinvented and this book definitely felt like it delivered on that promise. 

There was, for one, more emphasize on characters, or, at least, a series of interesting character portraits. One of them told the story of one of those many, and often forgotten, tragedies from the war, but even more interesting was the back story of Grijphand. Docter only needed a few pages to make you understand what made that man tick instead of drawing those events from his youth out over a couple of hundred pages. It was just a pleasant balance between plot and character. Although, there may have been a tad bit more plot than character.

The plot unfolds at a slow, methodical pace, peppered with a suspenseful wrap-up of one of their problems, before the murderer is confronted in a classic denouement and receives a lecture from Vissering on the Chesterton-effect – which is nothing short of brilliant. Yes. The identity of the murderer is a revelation in the best GAD tradition, but with a decidedly modern touch. 

Docter showed a skillful hand at tying all the plot threads together and make it logically click on every layer of the story. All in all, a very fun and clever detective story to read.   

The Key Problem

"Death hath so many doors to let out life."
- Beaumont-Fletcher.

Cor Docter (1925-2006) was a Dutch pulp writer whose books, under such bylines as "Francis Hobard" and "Salem Pinto," were in high-demand throughout the 1950-and 60s and became one of the household names that kept neighborhood bookshops and district libraries in business. He also penned an authoritative work entitled Grossiers in moord en doodslag: veelschrijvers uit Nederland en Vlaanderen (Wholesalers in Homicide: Writers from Holland and Flanders, 1997) and published three, classically-styled, detective novels under his own name and these were rocketed to the top of my wish list after stumbling across information that put them in the same category as Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr – which is no exaggeration as I have just finished reading Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970).

I have to start of by saying that Cor Docter struck me as a very knowledgeable man, who both loved and respected his craft. The introduction, of a single page, is a testament to this and has a very keen observation on somewhat of a Dutch specialty, the topographical police story.

"...a topographical detective novel shouldn’t just spew pages of information on a particular region, but turn that knowledge into an essential part of the story."

Docter followed his own advice, for the most part, making a decent amount of the history of Kralingen relevant to the plot and even the bits that weren't were, nonetheless, interesting for anyone even remotely interested in history. It also gave the book character.

Not a Dell Mapback

Cold Woman in Kralingen opens when a surging storm begins tugging the trees and gardener Harm Jispen is letting out Aart van der Linzen, a student he has been assisting with his thesis by allowing to be recorded while telling old folktales in the dialect of Boertange, before fortifying the house and planting himself in front of the television. But the ominous sound of shattering glass lures him from his safe home to inspect his greenhouses and walks straight into the blade of a knife. Enter Commissioner Daan Vissering (a sober minded man from the province of Friesland) and his team of policemen, who go over the scene of the crime with a fine-tooth comb and diligently hunt down leads as they speculate and theorize about every facet of the case. Including the tantalizing problem of why Jispen needed forty eggs, every week!

This makes Docter a lot closer to Anthony Abbot, author of a number of mysteries featuring Commissioner Thatcher Colt of Centre Street, and other members of the Van Dine-Queen School than to John Dickson Carr, who was an unapologetic romanticist. However, the link is not entirely unjustified, because Carr was the master of the locked room mystery and this one has just such a problem – and it gave me quite a turn in spite of being handled in a sober manner. No such nonsense about ghosts and goblins, but sometimes their absence can be even more unnerving!

Roughly fifty pages into the story, we switch from the murder of Harm Jispen to one of the weekly meetings of Kostbaar Kralingen (Precious Kralingen), a shadowy society who apparently gather to appreciate the history of Kralingen, but we immediately learn that it's a front and the lectures are just copied texts being read with nobody really paying any attention to what is being said – the speaker least of all. I also loved how the story transitioned with the society members reading about Jispen's murder in the newspaper. This makes for a pleasing, mystifying read that, uhm, thickens the plot, but the best part is yet to come. 

Cor Docter, "Prince of the Lending Libraries"

The spider in this web, Magda Quarz, uncharacteristically, disappears from the meeting and apparently locked herself up in the bedroom. There's light coming from the crack underneath the door, but there's nothing that can be seen through the vacant keyhole and then it happens: when they decide to look under the door someone, from within the room, forcefully throws the key under the door into the hallway. Goosebumps! They immediately rush the room, but the only person in the room is Magda - sitting in front of the dressing mirror, dead as a doornail, with the markings of strangulation on her throat.

Shocked and wary, the members of Precious Kralingen decide to keep the police out of it, for the time being, and shovel the blame on her 17-year-old son, Harold, who's flogged and driven out of a second-story window. Convinced that the confession they have beaten out of Harold will keep the police out of there business, they call them in and they send Vissering and his men. You guessed it; he isn't fooled, not in the least, especially after finding another clue that consists of forty eggs. A cat-and-mouse game ensues, in which Vissering has to break down the iron-clad resolve of an entire group, link by link, and the way he went about it reminded me a bit of Columbo. You have to understand that Vissering comes from the province and thus not stand, intellectually, in high regard with most of the members of this society. A mistake that was the folly of many murderers who crossed swords with Columbo. When will they ever learn not to underestimate a slouching prise de fer!

Vissering eventually learns what happened in that hallway and figures out how the trick was done, but they show their traces of his past as a pulp writer and I have my reservations about it, however, it was completely original and entirely fair. I have to give Docter props for keeping me from seeing what was blindingly obvious for nearly the entire journey. No idea how I could not have figured that out for so long and it was absolutely simple, but still, it lacked convincibility. Hm. According to my spelling checker that's not a word. Well, you know what I mean. I should mention that I'm not placing Docter in the Gild of Second Stringers, you almost have to forgive a writer some imperfections when delivering a complex and mostly well-done plot, and it's one of the best Dutch-language locked room mysteries I have read to date. A genuine pleasure to read.

Other Dutch-language mysteries I have reviewed:  

Bertus Aafjes' De vertrapte pioenroos (The Trampled Peony, 1973)
Bertus Aafjes' Een lampion voor een blinde (A Lantern for the Blind, 1973)
A.C. Baantjer's DeKok en een dodelijke dreiging (DeKok and a Deadly Threat, 1988)
A.C. Baantjer's DeKok en het lijk op drift (DeKok and the Corpse Adrift, 1998)
M.P.O. Books' De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011)
M.P.O. Books' De dood van Callista de Vries (The Death of Callista de Vries, 2012)
Willy Corsari's Voetstappen op de trap (Footsteps on the Stairs, 1937) 
Tjalling Dix's Een kogel voor Oedipus (A Bullet for Oedipus, 1954)
Tjalling Dix's Moord op het eindexamen (Murder During the Final Exams, 1957) 
F.R. Eckmar's Een linkerbeen gezocht (Wanted: A Left Leg, 1935)
Ben van Eysselsteijn's Romance in F-Dur (19??)   
Theo Joekes' Klavertje moord (Four-Leaf Murder, 1987) 
Simon de Waal's Een mes in de rug (A Knife in the Back, 2012)