Saskia Noort

Saskia Noort's The Dinner Club is a blend of mystery and social commentary with a good dash of hard-core romance thrown in. The story begins with an unknown male decrying, with heavy overtones of suicide, his failed marriage and the imminent breakup of his home. The saga then swiftly shifts to the close-knit group of friends known as “The Dinner Club” as they gather outside the burning home of Evert and Babbette and their 2 sons. Evert dies in the fire and, as the remaining friends rally show more to offer aid and comfort to the family survivors, they immediately accept Babbette's explanation that the psychologically unstable Evert tried to kill them all. Karen and her husband Michel agree to temporarily house Babbette and children after another couple abruptly reneges on their previous offer to do so. Two weeks later Hanneke, Karen's best friend among the group members, dies in a fall from a hotel balcony. While the police raise the possibility of suicide, Karen is convinced Hanneke would never have killed herself and begins questioning other members of their social circle.

As Karen investigates Hanneke's death, she reveals a self-absorbed collection of “beautiful people” whose shared loneliness and isolation in the ex-urbs of Amsterdam has drawn them together. At first, just the wives socialize, but eventually their husbands also become part of the pack. In addition to dinner parties, tennis, European vacations, and elaborate parties to celebrate almost any occasion, the men begin creating business deals with Simon, the handsome alpha-dog financier whom Karen finds irresistibly attractive. As she investigates her friends' deaths, she is shocked by revelations of several affairs among group members and lots of other secrets that make it impossible to know who is telling the truth. Where has the quest for money, power, and social status led these couples? Is one among them a very clever killer?

Noort's first-person narrative, as told by Karen, renders a believably caustic portrayal of female relationships that form in the pressure cooker of suburban elitism. They all strive to project and maintain a facade of perfection: the perfect marriage, the perfect family, the perfect home. Add some steamy sexual encounters and you have a tasty meal if not a gourmet dinner.

The Dinner Club is an appealing mystery whose setting adds a distinctive flavor to the plot but the book should also appeal to non-traditional romance readers. However, devotees of the cozy mystery might want to skip the steamy appetizers and just devour the main course. show less

Ik vond de Verbouwing echt een stuk beter dan ik had verwacht. Als lezer ging ik vrij gemakkelijk mee met de gedachtegang van de hoofdpersoon. Natuurlijk weet je dat er in een thriller de dingen altijd eerst erger moeten worden voordat ze beter worden, en het verhaal begon al niet erg vrolijk. Al met al een behoorlijk deprimerend en goed opgebouwd verhaal.
Mijn moraal is in dit soort boeken altijd ver te zoeken. Als 'de slechterik' echt vervelend wordt, denk ik altijd: "Vermoord die kerel show more dan! Opgeruimd staat netjes." En het moet gezegd, jammer genoeg zijn schrijvers het vaak met me eens en bestaat er niet vaak een originelere oplossing. Zo ook in dit boek. show less

This is the debut novel by Dutch author Saskia Noort. Maria, back-up singer and parent to two small children in Amsterdam, broke up with her partner, Geert, whose mental issues finally proved too much for her. She also had an abortion, feeling unequal to the task of raising three children and working without support. Immediately afterwards, she begins to receive threatening messages and it's clear she's being stalked. The police can't do anything. The stalker is clever enough to disguise show more their identity, and the harassment intensifies until Maria is frightened enough to leave Amsterdam. She's also worried that people don't believe her. The letters are destroyed. The things that happen are designed to look as though she was inventing the threats and she has no idea who she can trust.

There is a lot that is promising in this book. Maria is an interesting character; prickly and slow to make friends, but loving to her children. She has a hard time asking for help or trusting those who offer her help. The idea of being stalked, and how doubts are raised about the target's perceptions makes for compulsive reading. However, [Back to the Coast] is too flawed a story to do justice to the ideas behind the plot. The stalker's identity is revealed too obviously, too often and too early to maintain suspense and what begins as a tale based in reality becomes more and more outrageous in the book's final pages. I loved the setting, a part of the Netherlands I have visited and I hope to give Noort another try with a later novel. show less

A sinister book.
I loved it, don't get me wrong, but somehow it got to me. A woman author, Susan, is obducted by a man she used to have a relationship with. She's married now, has two small children. The obductor, Ernst, is also married with children, but he has cancer and is dying from it. Susan also has an affair with Thom, who is a news reader. Again, a triangle.
Susan is tortured, raped, humiliated. A small movie of that is sent to the cell phone of Thom. Susan hopes (and fears at the show more same time) that Thom will take action, when he receives that message / movie. After all that happens, Ernst wants to take Susan with him in his grave, he has it all planned. The grave is dug, and he takes her there. >On the road her hand becomes useless (she has one finger less and it bleeds heavily). It is a tric, that way she tries to get Ernst out of the car. It works and she gets away, hitting him with the car.
When he comes around again, he sees an explosion somewhere over there, down the hill. Susan is not in the car, they meet again at the same spot where she left him. They struggle and eventually she wins. Ernst doesn't die yet. The police, who was alarmed by the explosion, arrests her at first. They had no idea of what had been going on. There was noone that reported her missing....
That was the part that shocked me. Thom, receiving that message on his cell phone, did nothing with it at all. She counted on him to alarm her husband, who would call the police, although he would be furious about her deceipt. But not of that happened. So, you can't count on anybody but yourself was the message that was written all over this novel for me. Her husband was only very mad with her, her lover betrayed her and acted cowardly and her ex hurt her very much. She was the only one who got herself more or less out of the situation, by thinking clearly, trying not to panic. It was so realistic, it could have happened in real life. That made the book even more 'horrible' to me. show less