The Hollow-Eyed Angel

July 1, 2003
The author's 13th mystery involving the Amsterdam cops (Angels), plus two previously out-of-print titles in his darkly humorous series.

July 1, 1996
The 13th adventure for the Amsterdam cops (after Just a Corpse at Twilight) leaves Grijpstra at home and follows the ailing commissaris (the head of the force) and de Gier to Manhattan on the meandering trail of a Dutch national's death in Central Park. In Amsterdam, Johan Termeer, a hairdresser and civilian member of the auxiliary police, asks the commissaris to prod the NYPD investigation into the death of his uncle, Bert Termeer, who had operated a mail-order book business in New York. The elderly man's body had been found under some bushes in the park; an autopsy determined death by heart attack, and the police were suggesting that his body had been mutilated after death by raccoons. The elderly commissaris, troubled by a recurrent nightmare about a beautiful blonde bus driver with empty eyes, flies to New York for a police conference and checks in with his American colleagues. His messages home are confused enough to warrant de Gier's joining him, while Grijpstra does background checks in Amsterdam. De Gier has an encounter with a mounted policewoman; he and his elderly superior are puzzled by Bert's housemate in a Tribeca warehouse. Very little turns out as expected--not the cause of death of a high-living homosexual golfer in the Netherlands, nor the death (or the life) of Bert Termeer--in this leisurely tale whose shape declares itself as randomly as a waterstain on a ceiling--or the events of real lives.

June 1, 1996
Veteran Dutch writer van de Wetering is back with another in his internationally acclaimed series starring the officers of the Amsterdam municipal police, including the aging and never-named "commissaris," Detective-Adjutant Grijpstra, and Detective-Sergeant de Gier. The "commissaris," who is preparing to retire, has been invited to speak at an international police conference in New York City. When an officer in the reserve police force asks him to investigate his uncle's death in Central Park, the "commissaris" sees the chance to solve one last puzzle. The case soon proves to be more than the sickly "commissaris" can handle, and Grijpstra is dispatched to New York to provide assistance. As is frequently the case in van de Wetering's work, the mystery element here is subordinate to the character studies. The "commissaris" is haunted by dreams of a mysterious woman tram driver, the hollow-eyed angel of the title. Grijpstra plays philosophical games with a suspect, while de Gier is forced to do the legwork back in the Netherlands. A most enjoyable addition to a fine series. ((Reviewed June 1 & 15, 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)