Journal Entry 1 by goatgrrl from New Westminster, British Columbia Canada on Friday, April 09, 2004

The sixth novel in van de Wetering's excellent "Amsterdam Cops" series, featuring the unhappily married Adjutant Detective Grijpstra and his vain, cat-loving assistant, Detective Sergeant Rinus de Gier. These books combine van de Wetering's Buddhism, the hippie consciousness and sexual politics of 1970s Amsterdam and the more traditional elements of police procedurals to make for an interesting, quirky read -- I'm definitely committed to reading the whole series.

(For compulsives like myself, who prefer to read mysteries in the order in which they were written, here's the whole "Amsterdam Cops" series: Outsider in Amsterdam; Tumbleweed; The Corpse on the Dike; Death of a Hawker; The Japanese Corpse; The Blond Baboon; The Maine Massacre; The Mind-Murders; The Streetbird; The Rattle-Rat; Hard Rain; The Sergeant's Cat & Other Stories; Just a Corpse; The Hollow-Eyed Angel; and The Perfidious Parrot.)

In fact, I didn't enjoy The Blond Baboon as much as I've enjoyed some of the other books in this series. It's missing the moments of character development (especially in relation to Grijpstra, de Gier and their boss, the Commisaris) that brought colour and whimsy to the other books in this series. I hope the later books in the series won't be lacking in the same way! 

Journal Entry 2 by goatgrrl from New Westminster, British Columbia Canada on Wednesday, May 05, 2004

I passed this book on to my Mom, who was looking for something light to read. I'm not sure she'll journal it, but perhaps down the line it will end up with someone who will!