The Silent Service (2024) by M.P.O. Books

In 2022, E-Pulp announced two forthcoming series by Dutch crime-and detective writer, M.P.O. Books, who debuted twenty years ago with his first of eight novels in the District Heuvelrug series, Bij verstek veroordeeld (Sentenced in Absentia, 2004) – a typical, European-style police procedural/thriller. Over those two decades, Books turned his hands to everything from police procedurals and police thrillers to modern takes on the classical locked room mystery and short stories of every stripe. The short story form is not especially popular in my country, but Books is a Sherlock Holmes fanboy who refuses to give up on the short story without a fight.

Those two new series demonstrate his versatility as a crime-and detective writer. Het Delfts blauw mysterie (The Delft Blue Mystery, 2023), published as by "Anne van Doorn," introduces Detective Krell of the 16th Precinct in midtown Manhattan confronted with a seemingly impossible murder in a secure, top-floor penthouse of a New York skyscraper. So a fresh take on S.S. van Dine and Ed McBain by presenting it as a Dutch-style politieroman (police novel). However, the Gisella Markus series stands in stark contrast to the New York Cops series.

Gisella Markus first appeared in the final District Heuvelrug novel, Cruise Control (2014), pitting her and her team against a coldblooded, cruising serial killer – who even targeted one of her close friends and colleagues. She now has her very own series of police thrillers, starting with In diepe rust (In Deep Peace, 2022), but not a series likely to excite the people who follow this blog. This new series unmistakably falls into the modern school and Markus a model of the troubled cop of contemporary crime fiction. A character burdened with personal and professional problems that sometimes get intertwined to complicate things even further, but the crimes also tend to be a lot dirtier and grittier with no pretense of trying to plot a whodunit masquerading as a police thriller. That's doubly true for the second novel in the series.

De stille service (The Silent Service, 2024) begins on an unexpectedly cold, slippery night, "the kind of night where anything could happen at any moment," when two patrolling policemen find an old model car that had hit a tree head on. The driver seat is empty and the driver is nowhere to be found. So they assume some kids took it for a joyride and scattered after loosing control on the slippery road and hitting the tree, but then they open the booth of the car to make a gruesome discovery. A horrifically mutilated, raped body of a young Asian girl. Gisella Markus, of the district police in Amersfoort, is tasked with leading the investigation, but that's easier said than done when her rival, Lex Renkema, is part of the team. They fundamentally disagree about the direction the investigation should take.Markus has her eyes on a local art dealer, Roderick van Amstel, who lives nearby the crash site and could have potentially hidden away the driver. Going by the circumstances in which the murder came to light, Markus even suspects there might be an alternative funeral service running along the silent escort service the victim fell prey to. Renkema finds the idea of a "clandestine cemetery" preposterous and thinks they should focus their efforts on finding the driver ("...because we are certain that he's involved"). And then there the problems in her private life, which get hopelessly entangled with her investigation. So more than enough to keep Markus both busy and awake at night.

So, as most of you can probably gather, The Silent Service is not the kind of crime fiction people who read this blog traditionally enjoy, which is heavily slanted towards the traditionally-plotted mysteries rather than character-driven crime novels, but the story is not without interest – plot-technically speaking. The crashed car is a treasure trove of DNA evidence and so the story is not really about finding the murderer, but identifying and dismantling the organization around the silent service. A potentially fascinating idea to give a classical slant to a thriller trying to go for dark, gritty realism. It's not used like that here and it didn't try to, but it could have been played out like that.

Other than that, I don't have much else to say about The Silent Service except that it's a solid, well written police thriller showing why Books is the most underrated, underappreciated genre writers of the Netherlands. Whether he's plotting a locked room mystery or writing a character-driven thriller. I prefer the former to the latter, but they deserve to be better known.

The Delft Blue Mystery (2023) by Anne van Doorn

Good news for your non-Dutch speaking mystery readers and impossible crime connoisseurs. Last year, I reviewed the first short novel in the new Gisella Markus series, In diepe rust (In Deep Peace, 2022), written by Dutch crime-and detective novelist M.P.O. Books and came with the announcement he was working on another series – an internationally flavored series published under his penname "Anne van Doorn." The first entry in the New York Cops series, Het Delfts blauw mysterie (The Delft Blue Mystery, 2023), was originally scheduled to be published in 2022, but the original Dutch edition got delayed until last May. Yes, you read that correctly. There's currently an English version in the works.

The Delft Blue Mystery has already been translated into English and the only thing holding up its publication is the ongoing search for a literary agent in the United States. So it may be some time before the English translation is released, but a few people have already read and commented on The Delft Blue Mystery like David Dean ("an impossible crime/locked-room mystery in modern day NYC is quite a feat of writing") and Tom Mead ("I absolutely love it"). I've been graciously given a review copy of the translation by E-Pulp to give my take on it as the resident locked room fanboy. And the timing couldn't have been better.

The Delft Blue Mystery is dedicated to Josh Pachter, author and translator, whose The Adventures of the Puzzle Club (2022), co-ghosted with Ellery Queen, was recently discussed on this blog – followed by reviews of S.S. van Dine's The Scarab Murder Case (1930) and Clayton Rawson's Death from a Top Hat (1938). So contemporary, Dutch seasoned take on Van Dine, Queen and Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series is a perfect, unintended capstone to that round of reviews. Let's see if Van Doorn succeeded in retaking Manhattan.

The story begins with a storm rocking New York City making the New Singer Building, a high-rise tower on West 33rd Street, sway like it has never done before. Mrs. Philippa DeRoos, blinded and paralyzed from the waist down in a climbing accident, lives on the seventy-second floor and "can't stand it when the tower is struck by strong winds," but the roaring wind is not the only reason for the deeply suspicious and superstitious Philippa DeRoos to be jittery. Philippa DeRoos has been getting weird phone calls and found two voodoo dolls on her bed, "one doll lay on her side of the bed, the other on her husband's," covered with dozens of needles. Suspected to be the handiwork of their former Haitian housekeeper. Gilbert DeRoos tries to reassure his wife, "evil spirits do not roam the streets, alleys, and skyscrapers of New York City," telling her that she's absolutely safe inside the penthouse as long as she don't anyone inside ("only someone who comes up can hurt you"). And then rushes off to an important business meeting. But soon things begin to happen inside the supposedly secure penthouse.

Philippa DeRoos believes she senses a presence around her, someone moving around the place and hears something crashing to the floor. She rings up the building's security guard, Jack O'Grady, who searches the place, but only finds fragments of white and blue pottery underneath a tall bookcase – which has collection of delftware pottery placed on it. Was it the swaying of the tower and Philippa DeRoos overactive imagination or had someone really invaded the penthouse? But the guard finds no one on the premises and left. When DeRoos returns from his business meeting, he finds that his wife locked herself in their bedroom and doesn't respond to his knocking. So together with another security guard, they break down the bedroom door to find Philippa's body. She died under very mysterious and suspicious circumstances, but how can an intruder possibly have bypassed the security cameras, keycard protected doors that log every opening and closing without showing up on any of them? Not to mention the bedroom door that was locked from the inside with the key still in the lock!

First of all, the opening chapters with the high-rise building swaying in the storm and an possible intruder, prowling invisibly, on the top-floor penthouse culminating with an inexplicable death in a locked room are excellent. It breaths like a Van Dine-Queen style detective novel and in particular Anthony Abbot's About the Murder of the Night Club Lady (1931), which also concerns an apparently invisible intruder in a top floor penthouse despite being guarded and constantly searched by the police. Only difference is that the New Singer Building has a view of modern-day New York and not merely guarded by locks, bolts and guards, but security cameras and computer-logged doors. This contrast between past and present, classics and moderns, permeates throughout the story and characters.

Detective Krell, of the 16th Precinct in midtown Manhattan, begins his day not only with a possible homicide on his hands, but gets saddled with a new partner. Merrilee Hopper comes from rural South Dakota and worked as a detective in a town called Salem Meadows, but transferred to New York to follow in the footsteps of S.S. van Dine, Ellery Queen and Rex Stout ("the city of the classics, the city of my heroes"). Merrilee likes to make Sherlockian deductions, theorize with brainstorm sessions and generally treats the investigation as a game. This greatly annoys the realistic-minded Krell whose first year with the NYPD cured him of such illusions ("crime investigation is no fun"). Krell tells Merrilee not to expect any carefully crafted puzzles in New York City, “crime is sordid,” because its filled with lying suspects and witnesses, corrupt officers, snitches, unsolved cases and manufactured evidence – simply "life as a police detective is also an ugly piece of shit." But his advise falls on deaf ears. And is told by the higher ups he's stuck with her for the foreseeable future.

So they have to investigate another sordid crime in New York City by working together as they try to find out how a nervous neighbor, a jealous lover, shoddy security guards and shady business dealing possibly figure in the death of Philippa DeRoos. However, the decidedly classical storybook trimmings of the case become hard to ignore when they persist in sticking around the place. The police locked and sealed the penthouse, but someone is heard moving inside and a witness from adjacent building saw someone with a flashlight walking from room to room. But, when the police arrive to inspect the place, nobody is found!

The Delft Blue Mystery is a locked room mystery with two impossibilities: the invisible intruder and the murder of Philippa DeRoos behind the locked doors of her bedroom. Firstly, the solution to the invisible intruder and how it related to broken Delft Blue bowl is brilliant! More importantly, the reason behind those intrusive incidents proved to be not without consequences. Secondly, the murder of Philippa DeRoos is a locked room mystery of a different order, but no less clever or inspired and rather reminiscent (in spirit) of the another, massively underrated New York mystery writer, Herbert Resnicow – who specialized in these type of impossible crimes. I'm just in two minds about the clueing and misdirection. Krell and Hopper have to wait a while for the results of the autopsy to come back, which makes the exact cause of death as mysterious as the circumstances under which Philippa died and pulled a haze over the clues. There are more than enough cleverly-planted clues, pointing both to the method and murderer, but with the cause of death being an open question, you can't expect your average armchair detective to spot and correctly interpreter all those clues. Long story short, I failed to pull-off a Gideon Fell with this locked room-puzzle. But other than picking at that one thread, I have absolutely nothing to complain or nitpick.

Van Doorn's The Delft Blue Mystery is not only an excellent introduction to a promising new series, but a fine example of what can be done when you build on the rich history of the genre to create something new and exciting for the future. This is another step towards our Second Golden Age.

A note for the curious: M.P.O. Books has been writing and publishing crime and detective novels of all stripes for nearly 20 years now, beginning with police procedurals/thrillers, but a love for Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie made him branch out to the more traditional forms of detective fictions – always trying to strike a balance between the classic and modern schools of crime fiction. So you can call him the Roger Ormerod of the Netherlands with a hint of Paul Halter as nobody in the history of my country has any writer been as prolific and consistent in producing impossible crime fiction as Books. Now that the English edition of The Delft Blue Mystery is in the works, I hope some of his older work eventually finds its way to a much more appreciative overseas audience. De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011) is an excellent detective dressed as a police procedural with one of my all-time favorite clues and need to reread it one of these days. Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013) is the first notable locked room mystery to be published since Cor Docter's Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970) and many turned over the years in the books and short stories published under his now open penname. Such as "Het huis dat ongeluk bracht" ("The House That Brought Bad Luck," 2018) and De man die zijn geweten ontlastte (The Man Who Relieved His Conscience, 2019). So tell the American, Brits, French and Japanese to make room, because the Dutch are coming to claim their seat at the table.

In Deep Peace (2022) by M.P.O. Books

M.P.O. Books is a Dutch detective and thriller author who debuted eighteen years with Bij verstek veroordeeld (Sentenced in Absentia, 2004), first of eight novels and one short story collection in the District Heuvelrug series, which started out as a regular series of modern-day politieromans (police novels) and thrillers – calling to mind the Midsomer Murders and A.C. Baantjer. After the third novel, Gedragen haat (Borne Hatred, 2006), Books parted ways with his publisher and would not return until four years later with De blikvanger (The Eye-Catcher, 2010). This marked the second-period of the series during which Books experimented with presenting classically-plotted detective stories as contemporary police thrillers. De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011) is a gem of a whodunit and Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013) is possibly the first Dutch-language locked room mystery of note to have been published since Cor Docter's Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970).

The series came to a close with Cruise Control (2014; no translation needed). Well, it kind of ended. Three years later, Books began a new series under a now open penname, "Anne van Doorn," featuring two particuliere onderzoekers (private investigators), Robbie Corbijn and Lowina de Jong, who specialize in cold cases. Corbijn and De Jong debuted in a short story, "De dichter die zichzelf opsloot" ("The Poet Who Locked Himself In," 2017), which was followed by three novels and numerous shorter works bundled in four short story collections. This series covers everything from impossible crimes and dying messages to throwbacks to the Doylean crime story and thrillers. It took me a while to cotton on that the Corbijn & De Jong series take place in the same continuity as the District Heuvelrug novels. And when I say cottoning on, I mean De man die zijn gewetten ontlastte (The Man Who Relieved His Conscience, 2019) had to rub that fact in my face because I can be a dense imbecile at times.

Last year, a collection of short stories appeared, Meer mysteries voor Robbie Corbijn (More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn, 2021), but mostly things were quiet on the Books/Van Doorn front – until very recently. E-Pulp is going to publish two new series written by Books/Van Doorn in 2022.

Van Doorn's Het Delfts blauw mysterie (The Delft Blue Mystery, 2022) is the first entry in the New York Cops series in which two NYPD detectives, Krell and Hopper, investigate the mysterious death of a blind and wheelchair-bound woman, Philippa DeRoos. She was found dead under suspicious circumstances in her locked bedroom of her closely-guarded penthouse and the only clue appears to be the smashed fragments of an antique and valuable Delft blue bowl. I can't wait to see Van Doorn go full S.S. van Dine! The other series is not necessarily new, but rather another continuation of District Heuvelrug and picks up a year after Cruise Control ended. 

In diepe rust (In Deep Peace, 2022) is the first (short) novel starring a policewoman from Amersfoort, Gisella Markus, who first appeared in Cruise Control. Now she has her own series. Markus very much belongs to the category of troubled cops and her problems, private and professionally, casts a dark shadow over the story and plot. Gisella Markus marriage has gone into tailspin ever since her husband had a car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, which embittered him and put a strain on their relationship and a drain on their finances. So now they're behind with the mortgage payments on their dream house. Markus also has an uneasy relationship with her nagging relatives nor is she particular popular at work "as she is used to prodding others and putting them to work." Only colleague who was on her side fell prey to the serial killer they were hunting down in Cruise Control.

Markus has enough on her plate already when duty calls and is summoned one early morning to Heiderust, a cemetery, where a grave had been desecrated during the night and the perpetrators "took the coffin with body and all" – which had been buried only two weeks ago. The body that was snatched belonged to a bodybuilder, construction worker and ex-convict, Henk Lafeber, who had died in a car accident. His widow points to a colleague of her husband, Jan Reijerman, who has been pestering her about a brown little box with a golden crown stamped on the lid. However, she has no idea what's inside the box or why Reijerman wants it. This trail leads to a shady contractor, Wilfred Gramser, who lately employs a lot of ex-jailbirds. So more than enough to go on, but pretty soon the higher ups want to squash the case after someone confesses to the crime with the promise to financially compensate the widow and cemetery. Markus doesn't believe the confession and continues her investigation, which threatens to place her career in serious jeopardy. A second plot-thread is woven through the body snatching case and concerns a mink farmer whose farmhouse is constantly attacked by a group of militant animal rights activists. 

In Deep Peace definitely reads like a return to the District Heuvelrug series as the story reads like a contemporary, character-driven police thriller with a troubled cop who blurs the line between the personal and the professional. Not that weird as the fore-and after words explained the manuscript was finished in 2006, but a spell of bad luck condemned it to drawer until E-Pulp decided to give the series a shot. At the time, Books had already began to take a serious look at the rich history of the genre as a foundation stone for his future novels like 2010s The Eye-Catcher. It was already present here. So, while In Deep Peace has the exterior of a modern-day police thriller, the reader gets enough clues and hints to eventually figure out who's involved, why and what exactly is happening. Storywise, the ending also sets up enough future conflict and trouble on the work floor to make me suspect Gisella Markus is eventually going to join Recherchebureau Corbijn – Research & Discover or go into business for herself with Lowina de Jong as her partner.

I suspect In Deep Peace is a little too contemporary and character-driven to excite the majority of classicists who read this blog, but the Dutch crime-and detective genre would have been poorer without either M.P.O. Books or E-Pulp. They're the only ones in my country who acknowledge the genre has a storied history and built on it to create richer crime and detective stories with room for characters, storytelling, plots and even a trope or two. There are not many, if any, Dutch publishers that would publish a classically-styled locked room mystery or whodunit unless it was a bestseller (i.e. flavor of the month) abroad. So look forward where the series goes with the second novel, De stille service (The Silent Service, 2023), but, admittedly, not as much as I do to The Delft Blue Mystery.

More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn (2021) by Anne van Doorn

Four years ago, M.P.O. Books launched a new series under a now open penname, "Anne van Doorn," which starred two particuliere onderzoekers (private investigators), Robbie Corbijn and Lowina de Jong, who specialize in cases that have gone stone cold and occasional miscarriages of justice – ranging from missing persons to murder cases. Fascinatingly, Corbijn and De Jong were introduced in a promotional freebie, "De dichter die zichzelf opsloot" ("The Poet Who Locked Himself In," 2017). A short story that actually received an English translation and appeared in the September/October, 2019, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. 

I have since read and reviewed two novels, two short story collections and a handful of short stories culminating with the magnificent De man die zijn geweten ontlastte (The Man Who Relieved His Conscience, 2019). A monument of a Dutch detective novel with two impossible crimes, a dying message and a revelation about one of the characters that caught me by complete surprise. One of those painful moments in which the professional mystery novelist showed the amateur armchair detective who the real murder expert is.

The series went dormant for nearly two years, but has now reemerged with a third volume of short stories, entitled Meer mysteries voor Robbie Corbijn (More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn, 2021), collecting ten detective stories of various plumage – including two previously unpublished stories. However, I've already read and reviewed "Het huis dat ongeluk bracht" ("The House That Brought Bad Luck," 2018), "De bus die de mist inging" ("The Bus That Went Into the Fog," 2018) and "De brieven die onheil spelden" ("The Letters That Spelled Doom," 2018) on this blog before. So I'll skip them for the sake of brevity, but it needs to be said that they represent the standouts of the collection. And with that I mean they're the most classically-styled of the bunch full with unbreakable alibis, impossible murders and ghostly mischief. Don't overlook those separate short story reviews. 

"Het schilderij dat niet bleef hangen" ("The Painting That Didn't Hang Around," 2018) is a case that was nothing more than "a comical snack" to Robbie Corbijn, but not to the people who were directly affected by it. Isabelle Valck comes to Recherchebureau Corbijn – Research & Discover to ask them to reopen an unsolved, thirteen year old case concerning a 350-year-old painting by Jan Steen. The painting was stolen in 2003 from De Catharina Hof, in Gouda, where Maarten Lippinkhoff was the curator of the museum when the burglary took place. Lippinkhof was Valck's father and he had always been haunted by the theft, but Valck received a shock when she discovered the stolen painting, badly damaged, in his attic shortly after he passed away. She really wants to know what exactly happened and the painting is closely examined, but, whether the painting is authentic or a masterly done forgery, neither gives a satisfying answer why it was found in the attic of the former conservator. Not until Corbijn forces someone's hand by staging a denouement in the attic and has a laugh at everyone's else expense. A fun and almost typically Dutch little crime caper. 

"De vrouw die onraad rook" ("The Woman Who Smelled Trouble," 2018) presents Lowina de Jong, series-narrator and detective-in-training, why Corbijn has "a spitting hatred for adultery cases" and thoroughly vets prospective clients – before accepting or turning them down. De Jong remembers Corbijn harshly turned down such a case, but De Jong wants to help her out. Melanie van Staveren-de Maillie tells De Jong her tragic history that eventually lead her to be kind of unfaithful to her husband, which now has some potential devastating consequences. She has received a threatening warning letter and had an eerily realistic dream in which “an ice cold hand” was chocking her. But was it a dream? A week later, De Jong reads her obituary in the newspaper and suspect foul play, but Melanie appears to have died from natural causes in her sleep. When she was all alone in a locked house (not an impossible crime) and the clock is ticking away the hours until the body is cremated.

So a how-was-it-done kind of detective story, but the impressive part of the story is not the how or why. It's the slippery, but impressive, wire-walking act Corbijn had to perform to convince the reader the who was completely fair. When I learned the identity of the murderer, I frowned disapprovingly at the page as it was just plain unfair. Corbijn started to explain and pointing out why the solution is correct and not unfair at all, which is technically true, but not very satisfying. Not one of my personal favorites. 

"De pianist die uit de toon viel" ("The Pianist Who Fell Out of Tune," 2018) has a disappearance problem somewhat reminiscent of Freeman Wills Crofts' The Hog's Back Mystery (1933) with a solution that twists and snakes like a John Dickson Carr story! Maurice Kleinluchtenbeld was a famous pianist who reached the charts in most European countries in the 1990s with "his modern, romantic interpretations and arrangements of classical pieces," but vanished under mysterious circumstances in 2004. Corbijn remembers the case and described it to De Jong as having the appearance of "a botched magic trick." One moment the pianist was walking back home across a hill, De Soester Eng, which is surrounded on all sides by houses and the next moment he was gone. Vanished without a trace! Now he son wants the case reopened.

Corbijn and De Jong have two logical, yet unlikely, possibilities to explore: a voluntary disappearance or foul play, but, if he disappeared voluntarily, how could a famous musician with striking features stay hidden without ever getting spotted or even discovered – murder should have produced a body. The time, place and eyewitnesses at the time of the disappearance places constraints on a murderer with barely enough time to get rid of the body so effectively it was never found. Solution is a thing of beauty, "a clever magic trick," which rendered more than one character practically invisible. A pure, neo-Golden Age detective story. 

"Het bruidje dat geen afscheid nam" ("The Bride Who Didn't Say Goodbye," 2018) is a more of a thriller than a detective story and puts the spotlight on Corbijn's assistant, Lowina de Jong. Two times before, De Jong had been allowed to handle an investigation on her own and the first and last time her involvement lead to someone's untimely death. This third case is the second time it goes horribly wrong. De Jong took some vacations days to go to Finland to help find a missing and recently married woman, but the trip, told through a series of diary entries, is turned on its head when she finds herself trapped on a remote, desolate island with a captor who can vanish and reappear out of nowhere. There are some touches of the Had-I-But-Known School ("If only I had stayed in the Netherlands" or "if I hadn't kept deadly quiet, I probably would have ended up with my throat cut"), but the punch of the story is in its tragic and almost cruel ending. An ending that taught the detective-in-training a harsh lesson. 

"De man die wilde vliegen" ("The Man Who Wanted to Fly," 2021) is the shortest and perhaps the most ambitiously-plotted story of the collection. A story in which Corbijn tells a story to De Jong about his time with the police that taught him a valuable lesson. Always beware of the unreliable witness.

Ten years ago, Corbijn accompanied his then chef to the scene of what appeared to him to have been an impossible murder. A man had fallen to his death from a watchtower in a wooded, hilly area and there were two witnesses present who saw and heard the man fall. One of them was ascending the staircase and heard the victim hit the ground, while the other saw him fall and was seen bending over the body when the first witness arrived at the top of the tower. They all knew each other and the two witnesses have a strong motive, but neither witness/suspect were close enough to have pushed the man and that gives them, what can be a called, a positional alibi – which opens the door to a series of false-solutions. Corbijn demonstrates why "the unreliable narrator is a pitfall in any investigation" with an unexpected, third possibility. Anthony Berkeley would have loved this story that proved Anthony Boucher right that the rules and conventions of the genre can only be broken by writers who understand and respect them.

On a side note (Spoilers/ROT13): Z.C.B. Obbxf/Ina Qbbea unf orra rkcrevzragrq va gurfr fgbevrf jvgu znxvat gur zheqrere n crevcureny punenpgre be rira na haxabja K, juvpu (vs V erzrzore pbeerpgyl) snvyrq gb jbex va “Qr negf qvr qr jrt xjvwg jnf” (“Gur Qbpgbe Jub Tbg Ybfg ba gur Jnl,” 2018). “Gur Jbzna Jub Fzryyrq Gebhoyr” jnf n grpuavpny vzcebirzrag, ohg ur anvyrq vg jvgu “Gur Zna Jub Jnagrq gb Syl.” This is why this story deserves to be translated, because an international, English-speaking mystery reading audience will appreciate it more than Dutch readers. One is sadly more knowledgeable than the other where classic detective fiction is concerned. 

"De studente die zichzelf tegenkwam" ("The Student Who Met Herself," 2018) shows the author of these stories is not only a traditional mystery novelist and a modern crime writer, but also a massive Sherlock Holmes fan. A story with an unmistakable hint of Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" (collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892). Veerle Peeters is an archaeology student and active in an amateur theater company, but recently, she got involved in a bizarre situation. Veerle wants Corbijn and De Jong to find out whether she unwittingly collaborated in something criminal, or not, because a sick woman might be held against her will by her own family. The student was hired by a Hilda Jonckheere to play the real-life part of her terminal ill daughter, Bernadette, who was summoned to the deathbed of her estranged grandfather. Something is obviously at stake for the parents. But following a few critical questions, Hilda and her family simply vanish without a trace. So what really happened? What's the significance of the tattoo Veerle spotted on the wrist of the dying Bernadette? More importantly, what happened to everyone? And why? The plot and solution is a grand play on breaking down identities and really deserved a novel-length treatment. There were some great scenes, discoveries and revelations that would have been perfect to pace out and deepen the plot of a detective novel. And then there's the ending. Corbijn receives an envelope with a missing piece of the puzzle, but who mailed him the newspaper clipping is "a mystery that has never been solved." I vaguely remember that happening at least once before in another story and perhaps The Man Who Relieved His Conscience has made me paranoid, but begin to suspect there's a shadow detective looking over Corbijn's shoulder. You won't fool me this time. I think I can make an educated guess who this potential rival-detective could be. 

"De man die liever binnen bleef" ("The Man Who Rather Stayed Inside," 2021) is a perfect specimen of, what I like to call, oranje pulp (orange pulp) and I say that with the upmost affection as the story delivers a pulp-style locked room thriller remindful of two writers previously discussed on this blog – namely John Russell Fearn and Gerald Verner. A case with very little interest to Corbijn, a broken relationship without an apparent crime, which is why De Jong is tasked with most of the work. De Jong has to try to get into contact with a reclusive software millionaire, Hadley Green, who lives in a manor house on an estate "separated with a high fence and barbed wire" from the outside world. One day, without an explanation, he kicked his girlfriend and their 5-year-old son out of the house. She desperately wants answers. De Jong quickly finds out that getting past the gatekeeper and estate manager is easier said than done. She eventually gets passed the gate on a dark, stormy night when the entire house is plunged into darkness and potentially crawling with intruders culminating in a shooting in a tightly locked bedroom. Just when I thought I had figured everything out, De Jong's return to the estate the following morning threw an entirely different complexion on the case. A very well done take on the pulp-style thriller with an impossible crime in a house under siege (see Brian Flynn's Invisible Death, 1929).

So that brings us to the end of More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn. A rewarding collection with a dodgy story, or two, but without a single genuine dud to be found and traditionally there are one or two bad stories in every short story collection and anthology – speaking volumes about the overall quality of the series. Another plus is the variety within the series and this collection. Covering everything from armchair detection and (pulp) thrillers to locked room mysteries and contemporary interpretations of the Doylean-era crime story. This type of crime-and detective fiction is regrettably all too rare in my country, because not that many Dutch writers have the know-all to clue, misdirect or play around with the conventions and tropes of the genre. That's why I've been enjoying this series so much, but don't assume that completely clouds my judgment. Only a little. And many of the stories collected here would charm the pants off of non-Dutch detective fans, if they ever get translated. Here's hoping!

The Man Who Relieved His Conscience (2019) by Anne van Doorn

"Anne van Doorn" is the now open penname of a criminally underrated Dutch crime writer, M.P.O. Books, who made his English debut in the September/October issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine with a short impossible crime story, "De dichter die zichzelf opsloot" ("The Poet Who Locked Himself In," 2017) – translated by Josh Pachter. Here, in the Netherlands, we got the third novel-length detective story in the Robbie Corbijn and Lowina de Jong series, De man die zijn geweten ontlastte (The Man Who Relieved His Conscience, 2019).

The Man Who Relieved His Conscience is unquestionably the strongest entry in the series with not only a technically-sound plot, two locked room murders and a dying message, but also with the revelation of a sub-plot that has run through the background of the series, like a red-thread, from the start. A revelation that honestly floored me!

Robbie Corbijn's past had been largely shrouded in secrecy from the beginning and his assistant, Lowina de Jong, found some inconsistencies in his background story. Such as his claim that he had been a policeman, but "no one by that name had ever been in the corps." However, these inconsistencies were revealed here as cleverly planted clues that Books' long-time readers, like yours truly, should have been able to put together and figure out Corbijn's identity – especially the name John in combination with a character who appeared in one of the short stories. You should be able to piece this part of the puzzle together before it's dropped into your lap.

Sadly, I'm an imbecile whose brain is encased in a thick skull, of reinforced concrete, where the light of reason can't reach it!  

So, when the identity of Corbijn was casually revealed, all I could do was dumbly gape at the page before seriously wanting to kick myself. When I learned who he really was, I couldn't help but look at Corbijn like Scrooge must have done when he clasped eyes on the ghost of Jacob Marley. Yes, to say I was pleasantly surprised is somewhat of an understatement, but this is only relatively minor part of the plot.

Recherchebureau Corbijn – Research and Discover is a particulier onderzoeksbureau (private detective agency) specialized in unsolved murders, missing persons and cases with a highly unusual character. Such as the problem of the haunted road from "Het meisje dat bleef rondhangen" ("The Girl Who Stuck Around," 2017) and the ghostly manifestations in "Het huis dat ongeluk bracht" ("The House That Brought Bad Luck," 2018). There are many cold, but open, cases in their archive and one of these open files comprises of little more than "a thin dossier." A sad, long-forgotten case of a woman who disappeared thirty-five years ago.

Tessa Verwold had a rough time before she came to the Christian commune Caritashoeve, in Hooglanderveen, where "vulnerable and derailed youngsters were placed and guided" in order to help them find a way back into society. A place where Tessa felt appreciated and at home. She began to make friends and even got a respectable boyfriend, but there was an older man who was interested in her, named Wilco Krook, who was convinced God had brought Tessa on his path – only his infatuation may have been the root-cause of her going missing. Wilco barely survived a beating at the hands of the men of the commune and they claimed Tessa had incited them to do it, but she couldn't confirm or deny their accusation, because she packed her bags that night and left. Never to be seen again!

Corbijn once remarked to De Jong that, from all the missing people he's searching for, he felt "the strongest kinship" with Tessa, because nobody has ever really looked for her. The family called her a child with "a black, scorched soul" and were relieved when she simply disappeared, which makes them incredibly reticent to give the case renewed attention. Since the law only allows them to act "on behalf of someone with a stake in the matter," such as a close relative, the file remained open and unsolved.

One day, they receive a letter from a dying man, Zoltán Rákóczi, who's a retired psychologist that had been involved with the Caritashoeve.

Rákóczi confesses he murdered Tessa in 1983 and buried the body on the lawn of the Caritashoeve, behind a colossal stone bench, but an excavation at the spot proved him to be liar and Corbijn loses face in the eyes of the authorities – losing a lot of prestige they had garnered with the police over the years. So why did he made a false deathbed confession or was there a kernel of truth in his story? Corbijn and De Jong finally get their client that allows them to work on the case. However, the family is still mostly uncooperative, the church community has disbanded and the people involved in the beating of Krook, on the night Tessa disappeared, had scattered. This makes reconstructing that fateful night a daunting task indeed!

I don't want to divulge more about the plot than that, but there are three side-puzzles, namely the two locked room mysteries and dying message, that deserve some consideration.

Geert Eijkholt is one of the people who was involved with the tragedy on that night, in 1983, who now lives in an old, dirty caravan on the lot of a closed, badly neglected garden center. De Jong tried to get into contact with him throughout the first half of the story, but, halfway through, she finds his body hanging from a coat hook inside the caravan. An unfinished dying message has been written on the filthy surface of the floor. However, the door and the window were securely locked or fastened on the inside!

The explanation to this impossible crime is a variation on a trick that has been used before in this series, but worked much better with a locked caravan and the meaning behind the cryptic, incomplete dying message surely was interesting – because it was a clue to a different piece of the puzzle. And this obscure message only makes sense if it was meant to be read by someone actually looking for the truth, like Corbijn and De Jong. This was quite a gamble and it probably would have made more sense, if he tried to write the name of his murderer. Still, a properly done, Dutch-language dying message is a genuine rarity and I'm glad one was included in this detective novel.

As they dig deeper into the past, Corbijn and De Jong stumble across another seemingly impossible crime, but I can't give you any exact details about that one. That being said, this locked room puzzle was brilliantly handled with a false solution, a dramatic reconstruction and a satisfying solution with a touch of originality. The principle behind the locked room-trick is not entirely new, but I don't remember any examples of it being used like this! A very practical and effective way to create a locked room mystery. A second thing I appreciated is how the personality and psychological fingerprints were all over these two impossible crimes.

There is, however, one (minor) disappointment. A big plot-point is finding the body and this is not revealed until the final page of the book, which felt tacked on and a bit of a letdown. The description of the Caritashoeve made me hope for something along the lines of Arthur Porges' short story "These Daisies Told" (1962), but this is the only thing about the plot that slightly bothered me. Everything else was excellent. 

The Man Who Relieved His Conscience stands as the best and most memorable entry in the series with a strong ending that tipped its hat to Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, which promises an interesting new direction for Corbijn and De Jong. Add to that two splendidly executed impossible crimes, a dying message and a personal revelation of the protagonist that was as surprising as my first Agatha Christie, you have one of my favorite Dutch detective novels. I honestly can't wait to see where the series goes from here. Highly recommended!

Unlocked: "The Poet Who Locked Himself In" (2017) by Anne van Doorn in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (Sept/Oct)

Two years ago, I reviewed "De dichter die zichzelf opsloot" ("The Poet Who Locked Himself In," 2017) by "Anne van Doorn," at the time the secret penname of Dutch crime writer M.P.O. Books, which is the first story about two particuliere onderzoekers (private investigators), Robbie Corbijn and Lowina de Jong – specialized in dead-end murder cases, missing persons and impossible crimes! Over a ten year period, Books has become the all-time most prolific writer of locked room mysteries in the Netherlands!

Between 2004 and 2014, Books wrote a grossly underrated series of police procedurals and first toyed with this time-honored trope in De Blikvanger (The Eye-Catcher, 2010), which introduces a minor locked room sub-plot towards the end of the story. Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013) is a full-blown locked room mystery with a seemingly impossible murder in a tightly secured, fortress-like house, but these miraculous crimes figure most prominently in the Corbijn and De Jong series – most notably in "Het huis dat ongeluk bracht" ("The House That Brought Bad Luck," 2018) and "De bus die de mist inging" ("The Bus That Went Into the Fog," 2018). And, of course, "The Poet Who Locked Himself In."

So the impossible crime stories from this series would make a nice addition to the translations of the locked room stories regularly published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and collected by LRI (e.g. Realm of the Impossible, 2017). Well, my rambling reviews of those stories got around.

Back in June, I announced in a blog-post (scroll to the bottom) that "The Poet Who Locked Himself In" was translated and scheduled to be published in EQMM either later this year or early 2020. The translator, Josh Pachter, revealed on his website that the story will appear in the September/October, 2019, issue of EQMM. I'm both excited and extremely curious to learn what my fellow locked room enthusiasts will make of the first Dutch impossible crime story to cross the language barrier since Robert van Gulik. Don't let us down, JJ. We're the only ones in Europe who actually like you guys. And that includes the rest of the British Isles.

Hopefully, this will open the door to more translations in the future, not just of the Corbijn and De Jong series, but also some titles from Books' previous District Heuvelrug series. De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011) lacks an impossible crime, but, purely as a detective novel, it's one of the finest my country has ever produced and has one of those all-time brilliant clues – one that makes you want to kick yourself for having missed. The previously mentioned A Sealed House is great example of the modern-day impossible crime story with an up-to-date premise and solution. There are some other notable Dutch locked room mysteries, like Cor Docter's Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970), which deserve consideration. You can find an (incomplete) list of Dutch impossible crime novels and short stories here.

So, having shilled practically every known impossible crime story my county has to offer, I'll close by saying that I look forward to what everyone has to say about Books' "The Poet Who Locked Himself In." My next regular review will be posted on Friday. 

Update 16-08-19: a preview of the story is now available on the EQMM website.  

Final Destination: "The Bus That Went Into the Fog" (2018) by Anne van Doorn

My obsessive, unhealthy love affair with the impossible crime story has been well documented on this blog and one of the high spots was unearthing a dozen, or so, locked room novels and short stories in my own language – something that still surprises me to this day. This country has produced detective fiction since the late 1800s, but the traditional, plot-oriented strain of the genre has been consistently dismissed as merely lectuur (popular fiction).

Consequently, an ever-growing list of our earliest detective novels are becoming lost to either history or collectors, because copies tend to be scarce and nobody is reprinting them.

So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I began to find locked room novels among the more easily available titles. Willy Corsari's De voetstappen op de trap (The Footsteps on the Stairs, 1937) has its imperfections, but reading an authentic, Dutch impossible crime novel from the Golden Age made me overlook those minor flaws – such as a vital clue that was withheld from both the reader and detective. Cor Docter's Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970) is a politieroman (police novel) with an entirely original locked room-trick and has a superb, John Dickson Carr-like scene when the murder is discovered that gave me goosebumps! M.P.O. Books' Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013) is a modern take on the age-old trope with a brutal murder in a fortified villa protected with steel shutters, cameras and overhead lights activated by motion-and pressure sensors.

Unfortunately, these Dutch locked room mysteries, especially the older ones, are few and far between. Fortunately, M.P.O. Books is still producing impossible crime fiction at a regular, steady pace.

Books debuted in the early 2000s with Bij verstek veroordeeld (Sentenced in Absentia, 2004), introducing the men and women of District Heuvelrug, who appear in an additional seven novels, published over a ten year period, such as the outstanding De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011) – one of the finest Dutch detective stories ever written. After the publication of Cruise Control (2014; no translation needed), Books abandoned District Heuvelrug and adopted, what's now, the open penname of "Anne van Doorn" and began working on a brand new series.

Robbie Corbijn and Lowina de Jong are particuliere onderzoekers (private investigators) specialized in dormant murder cases, finding missing persons and impossible crimes. There have been quite a few in this series so far.

The series began in 2017 with the publication of "De dichter die zichzelf opsloot" ("The Poet Who Locked Himself In," in which a reclusive poet is found murdered behind the locked door and window of a log cabin. Back in December, I reviewed "Het huis dat ongeluk bracht" ("The House That Brought Bad Luck") that has a house plagued by an elusive, seemingly invisible plaaggeest (a tormenting spirit) knocking on the front door before vanishing like a ghost. There are two further stories in the two short story collections: "De arts die de weg kwijt was" ("The Doctor Who Got Lost On the Way") has a locked car problem and the miraculous disappearance of an entire top-floor, while "De bergen die geen vergetelheid kennen" ("The Mountains That Do Not Forget") has an impossible shooting committed in 1933 in a locked tower room – situated in an isolated valley in Northern Albania. On the last day of 2018, "De bus die de mist inging" ("The Bus That Went Into the Fog," 2018) was published and answers the question how a man could have been strangled on a bus without the driver or passengers noticing it.

But before we get to the good stuff, you have to know that, while every novel or short story concentrates on a single case, the investigations can stretch over many months or even years. Corbijn and De Jong have a dozen cases open at all time. De Jong narrates the series and she regularly refers to the files they working on when their current investigation has come to another dead-end. She opens here with an enticing description of a case that had been allured to in a previous short story.

The description roughly translates as follow: "another cold case concerns the remarkable history of a murder in a Belgian coalmine, hundreds of meters underground, while the victim had been alone. As if he had been killed by an invisible person." This story better be ready for publication later this year, because I don't intend to wait until 2020! But back to the story at hand.

"The Bus That Went Into the Fog" tells the story of a murder that has stumped the police for over two decades and began on "a cold, windless winter day" in January, 1996. A "persistent fog" was causing problems throughout the country, but the fog was less dense on the Veluwe and a normally deserted bus platform, in the middle of the woods, becomes the stage of a crafty murderer when a man is killed aboard a small regiobus (regional bus) – connecting the various villages in the region. Every way you looked at the murder, it appeared to be a completely impossible and hopeless case.

The victim is identified as an American from New York, Jason Hunter, but this turned out to be an assumed identity and the autopsy showed he had undergone plastic surgery to alter his face. According to the bus driver, Hunter had been carrying, what appeared to be, a doctor's bag and that bag was not found until the following day in a ditch. The bag was filled with cotton-wool! Even more baffling than the mysteries enshrouding the victim are the circumstances of his death. Hunter had been strangled with a necktie without resisting, but how could this have happened without, in a small bus, without anyone seeing the murder or hearing the murder happen?

Plan of the bus

Only solution that makes sense if they were all in on it, but consider this unlikely collection of conspirators.

Corporal Paul Overvest occupied the best seat to have committed the murder, but the case against him fell apart. Arnold van Eijs is a factory worker on his back home. Adriana Villerius is an elderly dame (lady) who spend the bus ride knitting and provided an alibi to the last passenger, Martin Goensse, a high-school student whose stamped strippenkaart (zone pass) was found underneath the victim's seat – see the diagram (right) for their exact positions on the bus. So how could the murder have been committed under these circumstances?

The murderer's trick here is "een duivels waagstuk" ("a devilish venture") and delightfully elaborate without becoming incomprehensible, but the impossibility and solution has a weakness I always associate with Jonathan Creek. Thankfully, this weakness isn't used as a last minute twist, sprung on an unsuspected reader, but is uncovered during the investigation. So the focus remains mostly on the how of the murder. A good decision, I think.

The murder of the American, who had been buried as Jason Hunter, remained unsolved for more than twenty years, but then the news reaches Corbijn that the bus driver, Hans Zwartkruis, has passed away. Zwartkruis had been marked as a person of interest by the police, because they were convinced he either knew or had seen something, but he vehemently denied any knowledge or involvement. So now Corbijn wants to talk to his widow in the hope that she wants to talk. Slowly, but surely, Corbijn and De Jong begin to uncover previously unknown information, leads and even a second murder that had been filed away as a solved case of manslaughter.

This part of the story has a color reproduction of two stamped strips from two zone passes, which is one of the main clues to the murder method. An elaborate, deadly stage illusion played out on a mist-enshrouded, regional bus in the middle of nowhere. I think the who was not as impressive as the how, but absolutely necessary to get to the victim and something I can easily forgive, because I really appreciate a well plotted and original impossible problem – which is what "The Bus That Went Into the Fog" gave me. A new take on a classic locked room technique reminiscent of Miles Burton's Death in the Tunnel (1936).

To sum everything up, "The Bus That Went Into the Fog" has a shrewdly plotted impossible murder, but the how of the crime leaned heavily on the who, which failed to give the reader a thoroughly satisfying answer. So the story is best read as a pure, old-fashioned howdunit in a more modern setting and comes very much recommended to fans of the series or locked room enthusiasts.

Finally, I have some good news for the people who have expressed their wish to see this series get translated. One of the (locked room) stories is going to be published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine either later this year or in 2020. I'll post an update when I know more.