Detective Lotte Meerman is convinced the death of Frank Stapel, a painter and decorator, isn’t an accident after she and his widow Tessa find a skeleton in a sports bag in his left luggage locker at Amsterdam Central train station.
The remains date from the Second World War and Lotte’s colleagues consider it of minor importance . . . until forensic tests show that amongst the bones is the arm bone of a crime boss who recently went missing.
The remains date from the Second World War and Lotte’s colleagues consider it of minor importance . . . until forensic tests show that amongst the bones is the arm bone of a crime boss who recently went missing.
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Reviews
Complete with a strong and respectable female protagonist, Anja de Jager presents a thrilling whodunit that is bound to ensure the admiration of any reader. Welcome to Amsterdam.
[Meerman's] painstaking police work is undermined by emotional turmoil in a novel brilliantly evoking the isolation of a woman with an unbearable weight on her conscience
An impressive debut . . . De Jager is as good on dodgy family relations as she is on police procedure
Anja de Jager's debut novel is a tightly written, cleverly plotted whodunit that keeps the reader guessing almost to the last page
De Jager manages to circumvent the overfamiliar. The evocation of a bitterly cold Amsterdam is worthy of Nicholas Freeling's Van der Valk books
A harrowing but absorbing read
The book succeeds as a portrait of both a city and, in its heroine, a delightfully dysfunctional personality