Hard Rain (Amsterdam Cops) - Softcover

Van De Wetering, Janwillem

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1569471045 ISBN 13: 9781569471043

Publisher: Soho Crime, 2003

Synopsis

During a random break-in, three heroin addicts discover the corpse of banker Martin Ijsbreker. They arrange his death to look like a suicide and flee with his valuables, but are found dead of an overdose the next day. The investigating officer dismissed their deaths as an accident, but the commissaris suspects that his cousin and childhood nemesis, Willem Fernandus, murdered Ijsbreker to protect his own shares in the dead man’s bank. When the two finally confront each other as adversaries, someone will die.

About this title

About the Author

Janwillem van de Wetering (1931–2008) was born and raised in Rotterdam, but lived most recently in Surry, Maine. He served as a member of the Amsterdam Special Constabulary and was once a Zen Buddhist monk. He is renowned for his detective fiction, including Outsider in Amsterdam; The Corpse on the Dike; the short story collection The Sergeant’s Cat; The Maine Massacre, which garnered him the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière; and ten other books in the Amsterdam Cops series.

From Publishers Weekly

On a stormy night in Amsterdam, banker Martin Ijsbreker is killed by a sniper as he sits by an open window at his home along the Binnenkant Canal. Three junkies then enter Ijsbreker's house, arrange his death to look like suicide and steal valuables for which they will be paid in heroin. The next day the addicts are found dead of overdoses in a houseboat on the Binnenkant, and Chief Inspector Halba, in charge of the Murder Brigade while his superior, the commissaris, is on holiday, dismisses their deaths as accidental. The commissaris and his trusted subordinates, Adjutant Grijpstra and Sergeant de Gier, heroes of van de Wetering's superlative Dutch crime series (Outsider in Amsterdam, The Rattle-Rat, etc.), suspect that the four deaths on the canal are linked, especially since Ijsbreker had been an officer at the Banque du Credit and connected to its nefarious affiliate, the Society for Help Abroad, both run by evil Willem Fernandus. But the virtuous trimuvirate are ordered off the case and relieved of their duties by Amsterdam's corrupt chief of police. How can they catch a gang of murderous criminals when, as de Gier says, "We're the only good guys left"? Happily, they manage to, in a fast-moving story that combines action, detection, satire, Zen philosophy and pure fun, and shows van de Wetering to be at the top of his form.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Soho Crime
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1569471045
• ISBN 13: 9781569471043
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 320