The Harbour Master [Kindle Edition]

Amsterdam is a good setting for this very believable story. Plot straightforward but with some nice twists and turns. The characters felt real - some good descriptions. Some made me smile. The pace was uneven which added to a feeling of reality. Altogether a nice book to read curled up in the warm!

Having read and really enjoyed the Candidate, another novella by Pembrey, the Harbour Master quickly made it onto my Kindle and didn't disappoint. Pembrey has a real skill in bringing alive the location of the story - in this case Amsterdam and developing complex characters whilst maintaining a story that never lacks pace or intrigue.

I think the novella format is brilliant - the Harbour Master is long enough to develop a story that really absorbs the reader, but can be read in one go. Highly recommended!

This is quite different from the run-of-the-mill crime that crams our libraries and bookshops. An enjoyable psychological thriller with a well-researched background. Looking forward to reading the rest of Daniel Pembrey's work.

The Harbour Master is a fast paced, suspenseful, political thriller set in Holland.

Henk is an experienced police officer based in the harbour district of Amsterdam. Contemplating retirement, partly due to the new regime at work his plans change when he discovers the body of a young woman floating in the harbour. Henk suspects foul play. Murder, prostitution and trafficking all feature in this story. A series of incidents makes him distrust his colleagues and superiors as vital evidence goes missing. Determined to find out why the girl died he circumvents policy and procedure and finds himself excluded from the case. Henk's family is in danger as his career nosedives. Will the personal cost be too great?

Henk is a strong but flawed character but subtly so without the obvious peccadilloes commonly associated with cynical older detectives in fiction. The story is atmospheric and leaves the reader with a definite flavour of Holland. The Harbour Master is like the successful Scandinavian thrillers of the same ilk but for me this is superior because it avoids the drawn out nature of this type of thriller with a fast paced, twisty plot.

Henk and his wife a journalist make a formidable team. There is potential for more stories here. The depth of character development is impressive for a novella. The plot is interesting and dark but a page turner which I read in a one go.

I received a copy of this book from the author in return for an honest review.

What joy, another novella from Pembrey! Each of his books so far has been quite different to previous ones: people trafficking/finance on the West Coast of the USA, horror in Georgia, espionage in Luxembourg. The Harbour Master breaks new ground in that the protagonist is Henk, a middle aged policeman in Amsterdam whose pursuit of the killer of a drowned girl takes him through organised prostitution to collide with murky elements within the police and political hierarchy of the city. The novella does not have the kaleidoscopic effect of his last work, The Candidate, and doesn't quite have the same dramatic sense of atmosphere, though the description of the countryside in the coda is beautifully done. What it does have is a thundering good plot and better pace that enables both Henk's character and the plot to be developed naturally and without rush. It also has a pleasing twist at the end showing Henk as having gone over to the enemy camp, making him morally ambivalent not unlike Ian Rankin’s Rebus. Altogether, in my view, an exciting read.