Reviews for On Suspicion

The average rating for On Suspicion based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-12-13 00:00:00 Sharmila Tanapathy I’m not aware of them anymore, but the Van der Valk stories used to be admired...and there was a popular TV spinoff. This is a police procedural: it’s not really a mystery. A gang of youths have been carrying out robberies in Amsterdam and then perpetrate a gang rape. Van der Valk takes the case, suspects the crimes were carried out by rich kids from out of town. Largely by luck he begins to have suspicions about some youths in a rich coastal new town: the story follows his finding evidence, understanding the details of the case, confronting the boys, etc. If you like this sort of thing it is well constructed, although there is a lot of explanation at the end clearing up all the loose ends. Van der Valk is constantly registered as normal: he has none of the eccentricities that mark so many literary detectives...or, rather, his eccentricity and gimmick is that he is Dutch. There is none of the angst that overtook later detectives: no broken marriages: his wife happily looks after their child and cooks the dinners. Like Maigret, he is one of those detectives who has the instinctive ability to read character and the world is split between genuine people and the phonies – and Van der Valk is no snob, if he befriends a bluff successful businessman he is also at ease with the local prostitute. But then, during the investigation, there is a strange passage: Van der Valk is questioning one of the phonies, the mother of one of the suspects, and it is stated that it would do her good if she was raped by three sailors – I’m not sure whose voice this is, Van der Valk’s or the author’s, but they are probably the same. As one of the crimes under investigation is a gang rape it seems strange to wish this upon someone...maybe the novel is about to move into a darker area, undermining the line between the lawful and the criminal...but no, it seems a genuine comment. There are a whole series of attitudes underlying the book: they aren’t investigated, they are just taken for granted: I suppose they are the attitudes of an English, well educated, middle class, liberal, male intellectual in the early 1960s...and many of them are a little unnerving. Despite the positive portrayal of the prostitute, sexism is the norm, misogyny not far away: it is presumed women will keep to their places; the boys’ girls (the ‘cats’ of the title) come off worse than the boys; it’s not a theme that the book deals with, but the women are disturbing...the book presumes that we, the readers, are disturbed by women. Behind the gang there is an older man who is finally exposed as emotionally infantile: he mixes fuzzy mysticism and National Socialism...but one of the signs that he hasn’t grown up is that he likes jazz: in Van der Valk’s world grownups appreciate classical music...God knows what Van der Valk and Freeling thought of rock music and the coming generations who listen to it.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-10-14 00:00:00 Brian Lafreniere I actually liked the writing quite a bit, but was too often annoyed by mindless misogynistic asides. Would have been 4 stars without the sexism.