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The Perfidious Parrot

Name: The Perfidious Parrot
Author: Janwillem Van de Wetering
ISBN: 9781569471302

by Janwillem Van de Wetering

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Overview

Grijpstra and de Gier have retired with their ill-gotten gains; they live idly while maintaining the facade of a detective agency as the source of their income. Now they are being blackmailed to investigate a hijacking by the threat that the tax inspector will be informed if they refuse. The valuable item taken was the entire cargo of oil being transported through the Caribbean in a supertanker. The pirates were armed and dangerous; they killed a sailor. The ex-cops are not eager to take on this case. Their prospective clients, father and son, are greedy former Rotterdam used car dealers - crooks themselves. Nevertheless, when the commissaris is threatened with physical harm, they agree to investigate. The three ex-policemen rendezvous in Key West where they are met almost at once with another murder. The trail leads them to a lap dancing bar called the Perfidious Parrot, then to a clinic run by saintly nuns in Aruba, and on to the formerly glorious Dutch colony of St. Eustatius. Along the way de Gier is suspected of the latest killing and Grijpstra nearly dies of seasickness. But the commissaris not only solves the crime, he manages in so doing to punish his nasty clients in a suitable manner and to restore to his disciples the pleasure of having to do an honest day's work.

About the Author, Janwillem Van de Wetering

Janwillem van de Wetering (1931–2008) was born and raised in Rotterdam, but lived most recently in Surry, Maine. He served as a member of the Amsterdam Special Constabulary and was once a Zen Buddhist monk. He is renowned for his detective fiction, including Outsider in Amsterdam, The Corpse on the Dike, The Japanese Corpse, and eleven other books in the Grijpstra and de Gier series.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Van de Wetering's series about zany Amsterdam police detectives Grijpstra and de Gier (The Hollow-Eyed Angel, etc.) has its own very special wiseass surrealism, and the latest entry is a doozy, as its author might well say (his ear for American slang being acute). The pair are lying around idle, having formed their own private agency in the wake of a windfall (they confiscated millions in drug money), when the apparently shady operators of an oil tanker come to them with a wild yarn: their ship was hijacked, a crewman was killed and the valuable cargo, which they were planning to sell to Cuba, was stolen. Can Grijpstra and de Gier get it back? They're not overjoyed at the thought (and besides, their clients are from Rotterdam), but when their Commisaris gets involved too, along with constables Karate and Ketchup, they head off to Key West and the islands to see what they can find out. There's sprightly local color galore as van de Wetering makes many trenchant observations on Caribbean history and supplies a splendid array of miscreants before the story is wrapped up with several debonair triple crosses. For lovers of the Amsterdam Cops, this is an especially exotic treat; for newcomers it will be a sparkling and more than usually offbeat introduction. (Oct.)