The Perfidious Parrot

The usual blend of humor and philosophy that seems to be the strong suit of the cold country writers

This Gjipstra/de Gier mystery finds the detectives retired from the police force, but operating, for tax purposes, a private detection agency as they have ill-gotten gains from a previous investigation which the commisaris (my favorite character) is investing for them. They are blackmailed by a father and son team and wind up on a yacht in the Caribbean investigating the theft of oil from a tanker destined to sell (illegally) oil to Cuba. A variety of complications ensue, including de Gier getting arrested in Key West, the comissaris traveling to Aruba, Grijpstra getting seasick, former US special forces in various guises, insurance scams, and much more. This is the last Grijpstra/de Gier I have, i.e., the last in the series, although I show more do have a book of short stories about the detectives. show less

Crime fiction from Holland. Apparently the latest in a long series featuring three retired cops using a private investigation agency as a front to launder some illegally obtained money. The story itself is very clever, but I want to mention the writing, which is very hardboiled, clipped and cynical and dark, but because it sounds as if it was writted by a non-native English speaker, the slang sounds vaguely odd at many points. This does not distract from the narative at all, and gives a faint sense of exoticism to the enviroment. I'll be tracking down some of the author's other works.

Well,what can I tell you about this ?. Truly not an awful lot.
Grijpstra and de Gier have left the police and are in business as private detectives,having acquired a load of loot by somewhat dubious methods. They are forced to investigate the hijacking of a cargo of oil from a supertanker in the Caribbean.
Beyond that I began to be totally lost in the rather clever,clever sort of story. At least the author thought it was clever but I found it rather sad that a perfectly good series with some excellent characters had dropped to this low level. Shame !