About book The Rattle-Rat - Grijpstra & De Gier, The Amsterdam Cops (2003)
I remember Janwillem van de Vetering as one of the authors of whose I overdosed by the time I was 13. Yes, I never read any books intended for the young people. It went from fairytales to some adventure books, which were too predictable and boring, to Agatha Christie and books towards thrillers from that. I know I read some JvdW books when I was 12-13 but I don't remember much of the details, so in a way this was a reintroduction to him.Grijpstra and de Gier investigate a murder of a Friesian farmer, Douwe Scherjoen, whose activities are not always so legal. The investigations take them all the way to Friesland, basically a whole new country.Perhaps the story makes more sense in Dutch, or as a movie. There are many bizarre components in the book. Friesland is in Northern Holland, but is seen by the Friesians and the Dutch as a different country, and Friesian as a different language. As the Friesians see it, everything is better in Friesland, there is no crime, the Friesians are prettier, better behaving, and just better in everything as the people in the rest of the Netherlands. So obviously the body of Douwe is dumped to Amsterdam... add to everything odd the Friesians add a mixture of bizarre sheep farmers, Chinese restaurants, drug trade, and bizarre cash flows and even more bizarre personalities. Interesting components, and probably I'd have liked it more if I didn't remember having read these ages ago. How could I like these? The taste it left now, besides all components of the story and enough action is still boring. Perhaps I just needed something more adrenaline inducing as a read right now?
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This is book #10, in the Grijpstra & de Gier series, and this one takes place mainly in the Netherlands' northwest province of Friesland. The running gag in this book (which if this were a TV series, you could use as a drinking game) seems to be the commissaris' line "I was born here, in Joure" for me makes sure that everyone is well aware of this information.Once again, there are some interesting character names. For instance, there is a female motorcycle cop by the name of Corporal Hilarius, and two men with female names. Oh, and a rat, named Eddy, that rattles (hence the book's title). There is a fair bit of humour in this book too which made the reading very light and very enjoyable.The book is about a Frisian man that is murdered in Amsterdam, which leads the detectives of the Murder Brigade to the homeland of the commissaris and Grijpstra to try and solve the mystery of who killed the man, and why.In my opinion, this book was better than book #9 The Streetbird and much better than book #8 The Mind MurdersNow, to track down book #11 Hard Rain.
—Stefan Percy
