The Midas Murders by Pieter Aspe

Category: 50 Books

midasmurders

Well, I do love a euro crime procedural don’t I?

This is the second book in the inspector/commissioner Pieter Van In series. This book was first published in Belgium in the mid 1990s, so the story takes place before the internet and cell phones were prevalent. They don’t even have a full-blown computer, they just seem to have a word processor.

I liked the mystery, a German business man is found murdered and things balloon into a whole real estate/old Nazi guy conspiracy. That’s what I love about a euro crime novel. Over here in the U.S. our crimes books are all twisted serial killer stuff, but over in Europe, there always seems to be an old Nazi hiding in a closet. So I thought the mystery was well done.

Van In’s partner, Versavel was a hoot. An interesting choice to pair up an old guy with a young homosexual. They work really well together. It was funny that the other police officers are kind of afraid of them.

Commissioner Van In was kind of a mess. I prefer my detectives and inspectors to be a mess, they need flaws, but Van In was just all over the place. Drinks too much, has a nice girlfriend AND a prostitute? He’s overweight, unhealthy, depressed. I believe in the middle of the book he has a heart attack but doesn’t go to the hospital? It was just too much, and then all of a sudden he’s all, “I’m good.” and he gets better? I don’t know. I did like his bad attitude and his casual prejudice against Germans. I’m not condoning prejudice mind you, I just mean it’s a character trait that shows that Van In is old school, but he’s also a good detective.

I could also pick up a very old school attitude toward women. But I cannot tell if it was Van In’s attitude or the author’s. The girlfriend was perfect, the prostitute was perfect, but all the other women were not described kindly and were all harpies. Meh. But, to be fair, all the women were in the government, and he wasn’t kind towards the men in the government either, so  IT MAY be that he feels that way toward government people.

I do feel that the political incorrectness in this story is very indicative of this time, and that most of it is actually used for humor.

I’m interested to see where Van In goes from here. I would read more of this series.

 

 

Tags: ,

No Comments