Dutch views

Author A.C. Baantjer's DeKok and the Dead Harlequin includes some nice bits about Dutch habits and human geography. Here's DeKok on the trail of a person of interest:

"It was not difficult to find Pierre Brassel. He was, so to speak, on display. The Dutch have a peculiar habit of never closing curtains, except sometimes, bedroom curtains. Tourists make it a point to walk the streets of Dutch cities, peeking into rooms as they pass by. Nobody takes offense. On the contrary, the Dutch take great pride in their interiors."

(Jan Vermeer, Street in Delft, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

That's an accurate observation, acknowledged by the Dutch themselves. It calls to mind those great seventeenth-century Dutch paintings in which a viewer is invited not just to peer into a house or courtyard but to do so in depth. (Space being at a premium in the Netherlands, Dutch houses tend to be narrow and thus to seem deep.)

I especially like this observation, evocative of the distinctive Dutch settlement pattern in which there are few American-style suburbs and lots of rural village/bedroom communities:

"The place was pleasantly crowded.

"Farmers came from the outlying areas around the village. Civil servants and businesspeople came from the bedroom community. Shopkeepers came from the small town. All had responded to the invitation."

Oh, and this:

"Then he thought cynically that his path, at times, seemed to be literally strewn with beautiful blonde women. But of course, there were a lot of beautiful blonde women in Holland, and a lot of them looked alike."

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Dutch treat

It's hard to avoid A.C. "Appie" Baantjer if one is in the Netherlands or has contact with Dutch communities outside the country. He's written about sixty-seven novels featuring a rumpled police detective named De Cock (DeKok in English translations, for some reason). A successful television series based on the books' characters has aired for years in the Netherlands and Belgium. There are a Baantjer board game and a Baantjer museum, and the author's Web site offers novels, the game, DVDs and even a book about Baantjer's early days in the Dutch fishing town of Urk.

Here in the U.S., my Dutch teacher used both the television series and the board game as teaching tools. Though his country is small, Baantjer is a big star, in other words, in a way equalled by few crime writers anywhere.

Perhaps because of the television show's pace, humor and roster of skilled character actors, though, I've liked it better than I did the novel or two that I'd read in the series. But I think the books' appeal may come through better in DeKok and the Dead Harlequin, newly reissued in English translation by Speck Press. Here, De Kok muses about the Dutch national character:

"To form any sort of gang, or even a `group of guys,' is not all that common in this country. The Dutch criminal is by nature a pure individualist. He doesn't form groups; at most he'll work with a single partner,"

to which his occasionally impetuous but here thoughtful colleague, Vledder, replies:

"You know ... when NATO conducts exercises, the story is the Dutch army always gets the lowest ratings in unit maneuvers, but the Dutch soldier is always rated first in guerrilla warfare. Perhaps with the inspired leadership of Pierre Brassel, the so-called gang managed to overcome their natural aversion to cooperation. Who knows what he promised them."

That's a nice, low-key piece of observation, off-beat, yet pertinent to the investigation at hand. DeKok's rumpled appearance recall Columbo, but his compassion and sharp, wry observations may remind readers of Baantjer's late countryman Janwillem van de Wetering.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009