The Amsterdam cops Collected stories

Amsterdam cops Grijpstra and de Gier bridge the gap between the big-brained European sleuths of the old school, who restored order from chaos through the power of their logic, and the more beleaguered contemporary European crime fighters, who are often overwhelmed by the fundamental orderlessness of the world. Through 14 novels and these 13 stories, now collected for the first time, Grijpstra and de Gier have bantered their way to solving all variety of bizarre crimes, using a combination of human empathy and Poroitian gray matter. In the short form, with less time to develop individual idiosyncrasies, the emphasis falls on deduction, and the pair deliver the goods, as in "Six This, Six That," where Grijpstra makes sense of a Newtonian riddle to solve a cash-register scam turned lethal. Finally, though, it is quirkiness not mental gymnastics that draw us to these stories, with van de Wetering never failing to isolate those moments of sheer human oddity that unlock the emotional lives of his characters. --Bill Ott

Like a novel, a good mystery short story demands well-rounded characters, suspense and a satisfying plot; this collection of 13 tales by the usually outstanding van de Wetering falls short on all three counts. Perhaps it's because the author, a former Zen Buddhist monk, compresses his stories into koan-like vignettes in which, for the most part, the police solve crimes through intuition rather than by analyzing clues. Written during the past 16 years, the stories feature the Amsterdam Murder Brigade's cynical, jowly Detective-Adjutant Henk Grijpstra and his handsome assistant Detective-Sergeant Rinus de Gier. In several storiesÄ"Six This, Six That," "There Goes Ravelaar," "Heron Island," "The Sergeant's Cat" and "Houseful of Mussels"Äthe police make arrests based on unexplained assumptions. Maybe satori, the sudden enlightenment of Zen philosophy, is at work, but the result will leave readers puzzled. In other casesÄ"The Deadly Egg," "Letter Present," "Hup Three" and "The Bongo Bungler"Äthe police don't have enough evidence to arrest the suspects, but the bad guys still get their comeuppance, either through accident or suicide. A sense of loss pervades some stories, like "The Machine Gun and the Mannequin," while in others, only Grijpstra's and de Gier's silly banter relieves the banality of their work. Van de Wetering's novels (The Perfidious Parrot, etc.) are known for their witty plots and eccentric characters; his books on Zen are quirky and engaging. Unfortunately, not even one hand can clap for these disappointing tales. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Since Adjutant Henk Grijpstra and Sgt. Rinus de Gier have appeared in 14 novels (The Perfidious Parrot, 1998, etc.) and only 13 stories'all of them collected here, 5 readily available in English for the first time'readers may wonder whether the short form really suits van de Wetering's digressive gifts. The answer is yes, absolutely, fabulously'but only if you're willing to define the detective short story rather more generously than usual. Van de Wetering, playing with the form like a cat with a mouse, sets his detective duo to investigate murders, suicides, a supermarket scam, sometimes shunting them into minor roles or keeps them offstage till the climax (their boss the commisaris even gets a case of his own). His expositions are equally varied'has any writer of mystery short fiction ever been so inventive in the ways he lays out the facts of a case?'and his casts thin but memorable, since he paints his characters so lovingly that he rarely has time to set up more than a suspect or two, each of them well worth your time. The changes van de Wetering rings on the short-story formula do more than any other recent writer's work to inspire confidence in the form.