The Dutchman: An Historical Mystery - Softcover

Meyers, Maan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553562851 ISBN 13: 9780553562859

Publisher: Crimeline, 1993

Synopsis

Pieter Tonneman, the law in the fledgling Dutch settlement on the southern tip of Manhattan Island, must look into the apparent suicide of a local tavern owner and a fire in Jews Alley. Reprint.

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: Crimeline
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0553562851
• ISBN 13: 9780553562859
• Binding: Paperback