I've come to like Van de Wetering for the zen-like quality of his books, not the mystery per se. I thought the depiction of Japan and the way zen infuses the lives of the various characters, both practitioners and not, was very good. ( )

Not your father's mystery novel: Yes, van de Wettering is a plodding writer. Yes, his detectives don't do much detecting in this book.But give him credit for his strengths, including characterization, and for even attempting the bizarre marriage of Zen and the mystery novel.If you want a Dutch-flavored detective, read Baantjer. In Van de Wettering's books, the cops are far too unearthly to be nailed down to a specific locale; the Netherlands is just as good a place as any to borrow street names from.All that said, "The Japanese Corpse" is not his best effort. He does seem quite uncomfortable trying to navigate the Japanese scenes, and character motivation is either too blunt (girlfriend and cat die, therefore you punch out punks who are torturing another kitty) or essentially nonexistent.

A fun change for mystery lovers looking for non-American authors. ( )