The Vermeer Deception by Jennifer S. Alderson

First Line: Kurt Weber gazed out the tenth-story window, taking in the first leaves of spring budding on the tree outside his doctor's office.

When Zelda Richardson finds a lead about a missing portrait by Johannes Vermeer, no one expects her to find the painting. No one believes she can do it: not her parents visiting from America, not her boyfriend, not her boss private detective Vincent de Graaf, and not the rightful owner of the Nazi-looted artwork-- but she does.

When Zelda tries to pick up the portrait, she finds the art dealer dead and several frames smoldering in his fireplace.  Was the Vermeer a fake? Everyone else seems to think so, but Zelda refuses to give up. Can she discover the truth?

I love art and art history. When I came across The Vermeer Deception, I couldn't resist reading it. "Art history mysteries" are one of my favorite subgenres of the mystery world. (Iain Pears' Jonathan Argyll mysteries like The Bernini Bust are wonderful.) However, I found Jennifer Alderson's book to be mostly annoying.

The one thing I did enjoy about the book was the information I gleaned about the men Hitler sent out to loot Europe of its art treasures. That was good. Unfortunately, that was the only thing. By the fourth book in a series, the doubts about a person's abilities should be dying out. Not here. No one-- not even her boss-- thought she knew what she was doing. Personally, I'd ask Vincent the boss that, if she's so inept, why is she still on the payroll? The other characters, like Zelda's mother and boyfriend, were also infuriating, and finding errors such as arms that were flaying instead of flailing didn't help.

The ending, which isn't tied up in a neat little bow, didn't bother me. What bothered me the most were the characterizations and a rather amateurish writing style. Needless to say, I'll be looking for art history mysteries elsewhere.

The Vermeer Deception by Jennifer S. Alderson

ASIN: B082R5XZQC

Traveling Life Press © 2020

eBook, 191 pages

Amateur Sleuth, #4 Zelda Richardson mystery

Rating: C-

Source: Purchased from Amazon.

 

The Driftwood Girls by Mark Douglas-Home

First Line: Her glower was as scornful as any sixteen-year-old girl had directed at a boy all that long summer.

Twenty-three years ago, Christina Tolmie vanished without a trace, leaving her young daughters Kate and Flora orphaned. Now Flora is missing, too. When a desperate Kate searches Flora's home, she finds a slip of paper with one name on it: Cal McGill. Cal is known as the Sea Detective, an expert on the winds and the tides, and consequently a gifted finder of lost things-- and lost people.

Cal doesn't think he can help, but he has unexpected time on his hands, so he begins a cursory search. What he finds may not only reunite the sisters, but it may also shed light on their mother's disappearance all those years ago.

Cal McGill's full first name is Caladh which is Gaelic for a harbor or haven, and many people have come to him hoping he will end their nightmares and find their missing loved ones. With his exhaustive knowledge of winds and tides and his far-flung network of contacts, he's been very successful, and I hope he continues to be because Mark Douglas-Home's series is one of my very favorites.

As Cal begins his search for Kate's missing sister, he's also faced with the death of his best friend, Alex, and this leads to much introspection. Cal has always been a loner: he "experienced the closest he ever came to elation. He was on a wild coast alone and no one knew where he was." I can identify with this aspect of his nature, but I'm also aware of its downside. "Was he becoming more solitary in his habits, too comfortable in his own company and silence?" Cal has to work this through while he searches for Flora.

The Driftwood Girls is several stories woven skillfully together. There's Cal's soul-searching after the death of his friend. There's the search for Flora Tolmie. There's the rather strange story of three people living on an island off the coast of the Netherlands. And there's the slowly unfolding story of what happened to Kate and Flora's mother twenty-three years ago. The book could actually be considered a study in the different ways people respond to grief and this overlying sadness-- as well as Cal's feeling of being cut off from the world-- may make it a bit difficult for readers to be drawn into the story.

The knowledge that goes into making Cal the sea detective is fascinating but never overwhelms the story, and the author's descriptions of coastal areas of Scotland and the Netherlands can have even the most hardened landlubber smelling the salt air, hearing the cry of gulls, and wanting to set sail. The only thing that I can quibble over is how neatly the story of Kate and Flora's mother was wrapped up. It all seemed a bit too convenient, just a bit contrived, but it certainly didn't keep me from enjoying the book.

The oceans, tides, and winds, the atmospheric descriptions of land and sea, the characters, and the stories all mesh perfectly into mysteries that I love to sink into. If you love stories like this, then you need to become acquainted with Cal McGill. Start with The Sea Detective, and be prepared to get your hands on all the others.

The Driftwood Girls by Mark Douglas-Home

ISBN: 9781405923637

Penguin © 2020

Paperback, 330 pages

Private Investigator, #4 Sea Detective mystery

Rating: A

Source: Purchased from Amazon UK.

Tumbleweed by Janwillem van de Wetering

First Line: Adjutant-Detective Grijpstra felt that this was not the best morning of the year.

Maria van Burne is a beautiful, high-class prostitute who's been stabbed to death on her houseboat which is moored in a canal in Amsterdam. It is up to police detectives Grijpstra and de Gier to solve her murder. While they interview suspects with iron-clad alibis and make trips to an island off the coast of the Netherlands, their commissaris will find himself investigating allegations of black magic and traveling to Curaçao.

It had been several years since I first sampled the Grijpstra and de Gier series of Janwillem van de Wetering, so I thought I'd better pick up the second book, Tumbleweed. The book concentrates on the mystery and moves very quickly, and I discovered that, although a great deal of time had passed since I read that first book, I soon felt right at home.

Grijpstra is the older of the two detectives. He's married and a grouch. De Gier is single and likes to dress fashionably. They work together well and I liked both characters, but I have to admit that their superior officer the commissaris (who is never mentioned by name) was my favorite. The commissaris is an older man who's crippled by rheumatism yet not ready to retire. He has a lively mind and is interested in almost everything, and when he sent officers back to photograph the dead woman's bookshelves because "I am always interested in what people read," I was completely won over.  Later on, his attitude toward travel was merely icing on the cake.

The mystery in Tumbleweed is intriguing, and the book reads quickly. Even though the emphasis is on the story, the characters are beguiling, and you can't help wanting to know more about them. One thing I do know for certain: I'll be grabbing the next book in the series in order to continue my literary love affair with the commissaris!

Tumbleweed by Janwillem van de Wetering

ISBN: 1569470189

Soho Press © 2003

(Originally published 1976)

 Paperback, 225 pages

Police Procedural, #2 Grijpstra & de Gier mystery

Rating: B

Source: Paperback Swap

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

First Line: The funeral is supposed to be a quiet affair, for the deceased had no friends.

In the fall of 1686 Nella, a young girl from an impoverished yet well-born family, is sent to Amsterdam to live with her wealthy and much older husband, Johannes. It is a marriage arranged by Nella's mother and Johannes' sister. As the days pass, Nella is increasingly frustrated in her attempts to find her place in the household. Her sister-in-law seems to despise her and her husband wants absolutely nothing to do with her.

The only real kindness Johannes has shown her is to have a custom cabinet-sized model of her new home built and to give her some money with which to furnish it. All she has to look forward to are packages from a mysterious miniaturist, whose tiny creations have an uncanny resemblance to people in the house.  Soon the reaction to these deliveries changes from delight to dread because the miniaturist appears to know much more about Nella and her new family than should be possible. Can the miniaturist predict their future?

I was looking forward to reading this book with a great deal of anticipation. I was ready to be transported to seventeenth-century Amsterdam and immersed in the lives of a family filled with secrets. I was, but when all is said and done, I couldn't quite suspend my disbelief enough to thoroughly enjoy the book.

As should be, the main character, Nella, held most of my attention, and her clumsy attempts to fit in this very strange household and to entice her husband into her bed elicited my sympathy. Each character-- from Nella to Marin the hateful sister-in-law to the distant husband Johannes to the servants, Otto and Cornelia-- have secrets and unexpected depths that add a great deal to the story, although I found none of them particularly likeable.

However, two things kept throwing me out of the story: historical accuracy and the character of the miniaturist. Let me stress one thing before I go any further. I am not a stickler for historical accuracy in fiction. If the story has its grip on me, I can ignore a few things here and there because I know I'm reading fiction. In The Miniaturist, the author has obviously done a lot of research on physical setting and objects. I can see the streets, I can picture Nella's house, and I can see the cabinet filled with tiny works of art. Unfortunately, the time frame of the story always seems a little "off"-- and not just because the characters slip into a twenty-first century way of speaking and writing from time to time.

In the book, Amsterdam is in the clutches of a strict and repressive church. Church leaders ban the baking of gingerbread in the form of humans because it smacks of Catholic idolatry. At the same time, women supposedly have a great deal of freedom in the city; Nella walks across town several times without a chaperone. Religious repression and female emancipation of any sort never go hand in hand. There were just too many times when I felt off balance-- as though the early and late seventeenth century time periods were fighting it out for supremacy.  I felt so off-kilter in fact, that I did a bit of checking to refresh my memory. For example, those gingerbread men were banned in 1607, not 1686. However, there is room for literary license because not everyone will have read enough about the time period to find these things jarring enough to turn to Google.

At the end of the day, the character of the miniaturist was the one thing that didn't work for me at all. Very little background is given, and the character vanishes midway through the book. Is the person magical? Crazy? Some sort of savior? I have a feeling that I would have enjoyed the book-- and the author's lyrical and descriptive writing style-- much more without this particular character. 

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

ISBN: 9780062306814

Ecco Press © 2014

Hardcover, 416 pages

Historical Fiction, Standalone

Rating: C+

Source: Amazon Vine 

Outsider in Amsterdam by Janwillem van de Wetering

Title: Outsider in Amsterdam
Author: Janwillem van de Wetering
ISBN: 1569470170, Soho Crime, 2003
Genre: Police Procedural, #1 Grijpstra & de Gier mystery
Rating: B-

First Line: The Volkswagen was parked on the wide sidewalk of the Haarlemmer Houttuinen, opposite number 5, and it was parked the way it shouldn't be parked.

Piet Verboom is found hanging from a beam in his sixteenth-century gabled house on a quiet narrow street in Amsterdam. Verboom was the leader of something called the Hindist Society, and the house contains a shop, a bar and a restaurant. His staff were followers in the society and were paid nothing. Verboom was turning a tidy little profit and had quite the lifestyle for himself. Why would he throw a rope over a beam and hang himself? The two Dutch policemen assigned to the case, Adjutant Grijpstra and Sergeant de Gier, don't think he did. Fortunately a person renting space in the house, Jan Karel van Meteren, is very observant and very helpful. With van Meteren's aid, hopefully they will solve the case without putting too many miles on their Volkswagen:

"This road doesn't go to Aerdenhout," said Grijpstra.

"Ah yes. We'll take a turning to the left."

"There are no turnings on the left on this road."

"Then we'll turn around," de Gier said happily.

"You should watch where you're going."

"So should you."

They found the right road, they found Aerdenhout, but they didn't find the mental home. Eventually they found the police station and were shown the right way.

"If the civilians knew how silly their police are they would commit more crimes," Grijpstra said.

Originally published in 1975, Outsider in Amsterdam really didn't feel dated to me, although I do have to admit that my cell phone is seldom turned on which probably doesn't make me the best of judges. The pacing of the book seemed a bit ponderous, and it was difficult to pinpoint the reason. Van de Wetering lived in Maine for many years, so blaming a translator isn't feasible. Possibly the slowness could just be a case of an author thinking in one language and writing in another. Most readers can only dream of having a problem like this.

Whatever the cause, the slowness was only a minor annoyance because the author serves up a veritable feast: the city and culture of Amsterdam itself, two wonderful characters in Grijpstra and de Gier, and a likable villain. In this book, it's not so much a matter of "who" done it, but "how" he did it... and is he going to get away with it? Lately I've been reading of too many bad guys for whom I've only felt disgust. It was fun to read about one I came very close to admiring.

Outsider in Amsterdam is a good start to the adventures of Grijpstra and de Gier. I intend to follow the series to its end.