Murder In Amsterdam

A revelatory look at what happens when political Islam collides with the secular West Ian Buruma's Murder in Amsterdam is a masterpiece of investigative journalism, a book with the intimacy and narrative control of a crime novel and the analytical brilliance for which Buruma is renowned. On a cold November day in Amsterdam in 2004, the celebrated and controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot and killed by an Islamic extremist for making a movie that "insulted the prophet Mohammed." The murder sent shock waves across Europe and around the world. Shortly thereafter, Ian Buruma returned to his native land to investigate the event and its larger meaning as part of the great dilemma of our time.

'The two novellas make an irresistible case for the popularity of the Dutch author' - The New York Times Book Review 'DeKok is a careful, compassionate police-man in the tradition of Maigret' - Library Journal A veteran of the Amsterdam Municipal Police Department (Homicide), Baantjer has been hailed in his homeland as the 'Dutch Conan Doyle'. This first translation of these two classic novellas into English is a testament to that reputation.

In this classic mystery, a Dutch police detective investigates a woman’s murder with assistance from the man accused of killing her. A woman, Elsa, is brutally murdered in her Amsterdam apartment. Her ex-lover, Martin, is seen outside the building around the time of the crime. The witness who saw him? A policeman. It looks like a straightforward case—but police inspector Van der Valk is not convinced. Despite all the evidence—and the fact that Martin originally denied he was at the apartment—he believes Martin is not guilty of murder. Instead of charging him, Van der Valk takes him on a tour: a tour of the investigation, a tour of Martin’s own past and a tour into the darkly obsessive world of Elsa . . . NOW A LIMITED SERIES ON MASTERPIECE PBS Praise for Nicolas Freeling and Van der Valk “Freeling’s Inspector Van der Valk is less rugged than Rebus, less parsonical than Dalgliesh, more Morse than Frost, and more Maigret than any of them. Marvelous.” —Anita Brookner “[Freeling] has given the detective story new dimensions much as John Le Carré has done for the spy novel.” —Newsweek

"[Van de Wetering] is doing what Simenon might have done if Albert Camus had sublet his skull." —John Leonard On a quiet street in downtown Amsterdam, a man is found hanging from the ceiling beam of his bedroom, upstairs from the new religious society he founded: a group that calls itself “Hindist” and supposedly mixes elements of various Eastern traditions. Detective-Adjutant Gripstra and Sergeant de Gier of the Amsterdam police are sent to investigate what looks like a simple suicide, but they are immediately suspicious of the circumstances. This now-classic novel, first published in 1975, introduces Janwillem van de Wetering’s lovable Amsterdam cop duo of portly, wise Gripstra and handsome, contemplative de Gier. With its unvarnished depiction of the legacy of Dutch colonialism and the darker facets of Amsterdam’s free drug culture, this excellent procedural asks the question of whether a murder may ever be justly committed.

The first Lotte Meerman mystery Amsterdam-based Lotte Meerman is a cold case detective recovering from the emotional devastation of her previous investigation. She is angry and mentally scarred - but being a police officer is the only thing she wants to do. A tip-off leads Lotte to an unresolved ten-year-old murder case in which her father was the lead detective. ANd when she discovers irregularities surrounding the original investigation that make him a suspect, she decides to cover for him. Now she has to find the real murderer before she's discovered, otherwise her father will be arrested and she will lose her job, the one thing in life that is keeping her focused and sane . . . Praise for Anja de Jager 'An absorbing read with the smack of reality' Daily Mail 'The book succeeds as a portrait of both a city and, in its heroine, a delightfully dysfunctional personality' Sunday Express 'Impressive . . . De Jager is as good on dodgy family relations as she is on police procedure' The Times 'Detective Lotte Meerman is damaged by her past and tortured by the dreadful mistake she's made at work . . . Amsterdam is the other star here, beautiful and deadly' Cath Staincliffe

In this mystery From the national bestselling author of Murder on Trinity Place, midwife Sarah Brandt and former police detective Frank Malloy investigate a murder in the secretive, high-society world of nineteenth-century New York City... In the midst of Sarah and Frank’s wedding preparations, Sarah accompanies her mother on a condolence call to the Upper West Side, where Charles Oakes, the son of family friends, has died unexpectedly after suffering from a mysterious disease. But Charles’s father believes his son was poisoned, and would like Sarah and Frank to look into the matter with the utmost discretion. Putting off their own personal affairs, Sarah and Frank soon learn that not everyone wants to know more about Charles’s death, particularly if he was murdered. As they unravel secrets that reach back to the Civil War, they also discover that they are in the company of a very present danger...

“Year Zero is a remarkable book, not because it breaks new ground, but in its combination of magnificence and modesty.” —Wall Street Journal A marvelous global history of the pivotal year 1945 as a new world emerged from the ruins of World War II Year Zero is a landmark reckoning with the great drama that ensued after war came to an end in 1945. One world had ended and a new, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come on a global scale: across Asia (including China, Korea, Indochina, and the Philippines, and of course Japan) and all of continental Europe. Out of the often vicious power struggles that ensued emerged the modern world as we know it. In human terms, the scale of transformation is almost impossible to imagine. Great cities around the world lay in ruins, their populations decimated, displaced, starving. Harsh revenge was meted out on a wide scale, and the ground was laid for much horror to come. At the same time, in the wake of unspeakable loss, the euphoria of the liberated was extraordinary, and the revelry unprecedented. The postwar years gave rise to the European welfare state, the United Nations, decolonization, Japanese pacifism, and the European Union. Social, cultural, and political “reeducation” was imposed on vanquished by victors on a scale that also had no historical precedent. Much that was done was ill advised, but in hindsight, as Ian Buruma shows us, these efforts were in fact relatively enlightened, humane, and effective. A poignant grace note throughout this history is Buruma’s own father’s story. Seized by the Nazis during the occupation of Holland, he spent much of the war in Berlin as a laborer, and by war’s end was literally hiding in the rubble of a flattened city, having barely managed to survive starvation rations, Allied bombing, and Soviet shock troops when the end came. His journey home and attempted reentry into “normalcy” stand in many ways for his generation’s experience. A work of enormous range and stirring human drama, conjuring both the Asian and European theaters with equal fluency, Year Zero is a book that Ian Buruma is perhaps uniquely positioned to write. It is surely his masterpiece.

DIVExplores the motives, mass media attention and narrative interpretation of the November 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh./div