The Rattle-Rat

A Grijpstra & De Gier Mystery Douwe Scherjoen was a well-to-do livestock dealer from the remote Dutch province of Friesland. Then his corpse was found, half-charred by flames, floating in a dory in Amsterdam's harbour. No one knows why he was in the capital and far from his native village in Friesia but since Grijpstra is Friesian by birth, and can understand the dialogue, he and his partner are dispatched to find the killer - or at least the motive for the crime.

Janwillem van de Wetering (1931–2008) was born and raised in Rotterdam, but lived most recently in Surry, Maine. He served as a member of the Amsterdam Special Constabulary and was once a Zen Buddhist monk. He is renowned for his detective fiction, including Outsider in Amsterdam, The Corpse on the Dike, The Japanese Corpse, and eleven other books in the Grijpstra and de Gier series.