Yesterday I read a truly bizarre but in the end thoroughly engaging mystery. The Hollow-Eyed Angel by Janwillem van de Wetering (published in 1996) features a retiring (literally, less than a month to go) Police Commissaris (head guy of the local police station) who is pushed into an investigation of the grisly death of a fellow Netherlander, long emigrated from Holland to New York City.
What unfolds is strangely told, with narratives swinging back and forth between Amsterdam and New York, past and present, differing viewpoints and points made about everything from sex to Zen Buddhism to persecution and survival. The story is told through various modes, straight narrative mixed up with snatches of poetry and dream sequences; there are characters ranging from the sick and hurting Commissaris to his buff and mustachioed colleague, a Haitian voodoo woman, a Mexican seer, an American mounted policewoman, a Polish philosopher, an American drug dealer, transvestites and Mad Max and a couple of gay hairdressers.
The scenes seem to make no sense at times but all the pieces fit together. There is one long drawn-out red herring hunt that actually turns up what is, in the end, the unifying theme and the telling clue of whodunit.
The theme is punishment: punishment wielded and sought, punishment delayed and denied, punishment warranted and yet never granted, thereby removing any hope of the mercy that justice can grant a perpetrator.
The author studied Zen Buddhism and it shows:
“Am I the only one who knows that this is about the void, that there is neither wisdom nor any attainment, that there is nothing to attain, that there are no obstructions and therefore no fear, that there is no ignorance, and no ending of ignorance, no suffering, and no path, and here we pretend to sit around being busy?”
The book is very busy — no pretending – and full of thoughts and movements and cross-purposes. I liked it.
I chose this book because I thought it was one in another series I’ve enjoyed, the Inspector DeKok mysteries by A.C. Baantjer. His books are great and his inspector is also rheumatic and phlegmatic and wise. I will read more Baantjer and also more of the Grijpstra and de Gier mysteries of van de Wetering. In truth, I think I like the Baantjer better; I’ll read one today and let you know tomorrow.
