As complement to Jim's interesting introduction, I would like
to add some comments about this Baantjer's series from the
Netherlands. I knew the writer but never had read any of his
novels; these, funny enough, were NOT translated in French,
even with the pass over that normally Belgium is (a bilingual
country: French and Flemish -a slight variation of
Dutch).
Even if known and followed in the Flemish part of Belgium, De
Cock 's series is not a huge popular success there, and it
was never translated in French as far as I know, exercise
that would be easy in that country.
I finally found here a book by A.C. Baantjer: " De Cock en
danse macabre", 1991 (De Cock and the Danse Macabre) in
Dutch, its original language
(published by Fontein Paperback). OK, my Dutch is a little
bit rusty now, but living in Belgium it is slowly coming
back, and certainly good enough to read Baantjer's
prose.
To answer some of Jim's questions:
- it's certainly not hard-boiled (in the way we understand it
in R-A)
- the dialog is somewhat colloquial from time to time, but
not to the extend of using tough slang. And colloquial is
more something as "familiar language" here.
On the other hand it is true that Baantjer is good at
creating moods and evoking Amsterdam. A friend of mine - a
specialist in popular literature- who is deeply interested in
whodunits, and their modern variations, red quite a number of
De Cock's series and he told me that a second interest was to
see all along the years the evolution of Amsterdam in
Baantjer's books, which was in tune with the real evolution
of Amsterdam as a cosmopolitan city that became even more
"international" the last 15 years.
Albert Cornelis Baantjer also wrote two books of "memoirs",
based on his own experience as police detective (rechercheur)
in Amsterdam. In 'Danse Macabre', the ageing De Cock explains
to Vledder, his assistant, that the boss of the Fontein
publishing house is in contact with him to :
...publish his memoirs in which he will explain all the
difficult investigations he, De Cock, had to solve during his
long lasting career as police detective... Amusing mix of
reality and fiction, as Fontein is publishing Baantjer.
E.Borgers Hard-boiled Mysteries ===> see a new article:
NIPPON NOIR http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6384
At 18:10 23-09-02 -0700, you wrote:
>
>This week I'll be looking at a few cop-writers
from
>other parts of the world. First up: Albert
Cornelis
>Baantjer of the Netherlands.
>
>Baantjer spent more than 25 years as a
homicide
>detective in the Amsterdam police. After retiring,
he
>began a long series of novels featuring a
Maigret-like
>Amsterdam cop named DeCock. There are now over
50
>books in the series, which began appearing in
the
>early '60s. about 30 or 40 of them have
been
>translated and published in the US. Oddly, in
the
>American editions the character's name is
spelled
>"DeKok," apparently because of the sexual
connotation
>in the word "cock."
>
SNIP
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