The Dutchman - Hardcover

Meyers, Maan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385426038 ISBN 13: 9780385426039

Publisher: Doubleday, 1992

Synopsis

The apparent suicide of a tavern owner and a mysterious fire send Dutch sheriff Tonneman, a resident of 1664 Manhattan, on a hunt for a culprit, while British ships sail into the harbor threatening Dutch possession.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

The first of a projected historical crime series by the husband-and-wife team of Ma rtin Myers (the Patrick Hardy series) and An nette Myers (the Smith and Wetzon mysteries) delivers interesting history but falters as fiction. In 1664 in the trading post of New Amsterdam, the slow-witted, drunken Schout (i.e., sheriff), Pieter Tonneman, must solve the mystery of a friend's death before the British invade as threatened. In a wooden plot pegged on such absurdities as a dog's delivering an essential clue, the central characters are made to represent such qualities as anger, constancy and stubbornness. The Myers do best in depicting the settlement's animated street life--pigs rooting in the garbage on the Broad Way; the frantic activity after a fire--in a way that makes it seem at once centuries' removed and immediately familiar. Their many historical asides, although often intriguing, slow the tale's pace, while shopworn narrative devices and flat, predictable characters diminish the story's dramatic impact.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0385426038
• ISBN 13: 9780385426039
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 306