This is a good start in the Detective Pieter Vos series. She plays in Amsterdam. Pieter Voss has retired from the police service because his teenage daughter was abducted three years ago and he was not able to find her. His marriage also failed. Now, he is discovered by a very young and self-willed police officer, Laura Bakker, since a young girl has disappeared and the news is handed over in exactly the same way as with Voss' daughter. Voss is reluctant to return. The search and hunting leads through Amsterdam's drug and mafia family, which have been fighting for years. Voss and Bakker soon realize that there are various moles within the police service and the political establishment. It's a race with time and some people die.
The story is very exciting. It grabbed me from the first until the very last page. ( )

"OK"; a bit complicated to follow.
Significant amount of pathos among good and bad people ( )

Na de verdwijning van zijn dochter leeft de voormalige rechercheur Pieter Vos van de Amsterdamse politie een troosteloos bestaan, maar als er enkele jaren later een zelfde verdwijning plaatsvindt, laat hij zich overhalen om terug te keren naar zijn oude functie en het onderzoek op zich te nemen. Hij krijgt samen met zijn nieuwe partner Laura Bakker te maken met de binnenwereld van de Amsterdamse penoze en het Amsterdamse stadsbestuur. ( )

Interesting setting, I liked the story line, but wasn't a big fan of the characters who seemed a bit shallow. I couldn't relate to them and they felt like a typical litterary personna instead of the possibiliy of being a actual human being. ( )

The House of Dolls – Fast Paced Thriller

David Hewson has used all his experience to write an excellent crime thriller, The House of Dolls will take your breath away. It ticks all the boxes with a clever defective detective and his even more defective side kick cycling around Amsterdam. It is yet another clever euro-crime novel that is set at a breathless pace that touches on darkness and some places we would rather not tread but need to see the light.

Hewson’s transitition from screenwriter to crime thriller reader means that he can spend more time developing the characters so that they are strong and clear, so that you get deeper characters with conviction. The plot is both imaginative and breathtaking while being original and fast paced, everything you want from a thriller.

A prominant politician’s daughter goes missing and a doll with blood on it is delivered to her parents, similar to a case three years earlier when the daughter of a police officer goes missing. Since that case the police officer Pieter Vos has quit the police and living in a wreck of a barge on a canal and his ex-partner is now married to Wim Prins. The police send for Pieter to help the investigation as he has plenty of insight.

Vos has an Amsterdam outsider Laura Bakker as his assistant, a complete misfit who is expecting to be sacked the following week. My small part star of the book is Sam Vos’ dog who seems to mirror the oddness of Vos with all his querks. Vos and Bakker are two different but identical people who work well together when nobody else seems to trust her.

As Vos and Bakker investigate the disappearence of Wim Prins daughter they step in to a gangland war, corruption in politics and the police and a long bike ride around Amsterdam. The further Vos gets in to the investigation the bigger the web that he has to investigate. It is when the daughter of one of the gangland bosses in a dingy by his barge that the pace and danger pick up in the search for the truth. Every where Vos looks the web seems to get bigger plenty of people are avoiding telling him and Bakker the truth.

It is only through the dogged determination of Vos and Bakker that the Police are able to crack the case with some surprising twists and turns. The bond develops between the pair the further in the investigation they get and there is a grudging respect for Vos from the other police officers who are hoping he is able to crack the web of lies.

A great book, short chapters that are quick and punchy, well worth reading and easy to understand why Hewson is a fantastic novelist. ( )