Customer Reviews

The House of Dolls (Unabridged)

.Fantastic book, well defined and compelling characters, a real can't put down book. Think you know who dunit , think again. I will not write out the plot, this book is like an onion peel back the layers and discover yet more layers. Enjoy

I took this with me on a coach trip and it kept me interested and intrigued all the way there. I was almost tempted to stay on the coach and read instead of alighting with the rest of the party and 'doing the visit' we'd spent so long travelling to see. I resisted the temptation but was so pleased on the way home to be able to continue reading. There are parallels with other crime fiction but that does not detract from the twists and turns of the plot and the faiings/positive attributes of the main character.
Well worth a read.

There is no sign of the Euro-crime band wagon slowing down and this new novel by David Hewson (who wrote the novels based on the acclaimed TV series "The Killing" is clearly along for the ride. A retired police officer is persuaded to come out of his retirement to investigate the disappearance of a young girl which has echoes of the loss of his own daughter some years before. It's a twisty tale with an interesting European backdrop. Hewson is a reliable story teller, and this is a diverting read if you haven't by now read enough Euro-crime to last a lifetime!

The House of Dolls is a very readable and enjoyable police procedural crime novel. Pieter Vos has retired from his job as an Amsterdam detective following the disappearance of his daughter three years previously. He is haunted by the idea that some clue was missed and that somehow he has let her down. When the daughter of a local politician disappears in similar circumstances Pieter finds himself drawn back into the investigation. The plot moves along at a cracking pace and the descriptions of Amsterdam are vivid. Pieter is particularly perturbed by the way the criminal fraternity of the city is changing. The ordinary decent Amsterdam criminals followed a set code but the newer (often immigrant) gangsters are carving out their own unpredictable world.

David Hewson (who wrote the book version of The Killing) obviously has very good writing credentials. The words I would use to describe The House of Dolls are conventional and workmanlike. Because there is just so must of this type of literature around it is becoming increasingly difficult to produce something really fresh. It is a somewhat formulaic – there is a policeman with “issues”. He tends not to follow all the required protocol and has difficult relations with his ex-partner.

This feels as if it has been written with a TV series in mind. The chapters are short and read like scenes in a drama.
So, not especially original, but nonetheless a very entertaining read.

Hewson’s reworkings of “The Killing” and “The Killing II” were successful translations of the TV stories into the novel form. He already had rich material to work with and gave it further depth and characterisation.

The combination of political intrigue and sleuthing – always already present in his own works – seems to have been heightened by his work on these two novelisations.

In “The House of Dolls” he continues this approach with a new set of characters and a new locale – this time Amsterdam and the intriguing new detective Pieter Vos. I don’t know Amsterdam so have no idea how well he represents it but it feels authentic. Hewson is known for his ability to bring his locations to life (which is one reason he was chosen for the adaptations of the TV series)

Vos is getting by in his retirement, which we find was caused by his mental and marital breakdown after his own daughter was kidnapped, a crime which remains unsolved. He’s brought back from retirement by another kidnapping of senior politician’s daughter, in what seems to be a taunt and a challenge to him personally. He reluctantly agrees to help his ex-colleagues and gets drawn back into his nightmare.

As with The Killing series, it’s the politics and intrigue on both sides of the law which drive this story, as well as the idiosyncratic characters. But hasn’t this all been done before by now? Is there a danger that Scandi-Noir has become formulaic?

In the end I was drawn along by Hewson’s storytelling, especially in later chapters. He throws in some nice cliffhangers and twists that are resolved with panache.

Amsterdam detective has lost a daughter in mysterious circumstances, and has withdrawn from the police force to drown his sorrows in booze and dope - until he is called back when another young girl has disappeared under the same circumstances. Together with a rookie from the provinces he delves into the mystery, but his unusual methods do not appeal to senior management...

My opinion: pretty feeble compared to some of his earlier books, which I really liked (Death in Seville, the Garden of Evil) both for their local colour and the good story. This House of Dolls comes over as if written by numbers, maybe to be translated for a TV series? Clipped sentences, feeble characterization - depending on stereotypes from other series, probably. This makes for a pretty boring book. It is not predictable, there are too many twists and turns for that, but I never warmed to the characters - the ones that I could remember, that is. As for local colour, I used to live on a houseboat in Amsterdam (as the main character in this book does) and I found a lot of little details that were wrong (lime trees don't drop their seed in spring, no local calls the Prinsengracht 'Prinsen', Friesians are not thought of as country hicks; and aircraft doors are not fifteen metres from the ground, either).
Two-and-a-half stars.

David Hewson has moved his crime thrillers from Copenhagen to Amsterdam. After the novelisations of Sarah Lund he has now created Pieter Vos. Similar in some ways, but in many ways a cooler more cerebral detective, yet just as determined. Brought out of self imposed exile to investigate the disappearance of the teenage daughter of the Amsterdams council leader he is reluctant to get involved, especially given the similarities to his own daughters disappearence three years earlier. With a gang war looming, the council in disarray, the police at a loss after a failed major prosecution and saddled with a country girl no one wants as an assistant he is expected to fail, but no one else is as good at the job as him.

This is a many layered thriller, with the gangsters and drug lords often being more sympathetic, especially the character of Theo Jansen, than the police, and infinitely more honourable than the politicians. Named for a famous piece in the Rijkmuseum this is however an Amsterdam of drugs, prostitutes, guns and corruption that simmers below the surface in many large cities. In his investigation Vos meets and confronts his past and his demons.

Well constructed, and with many twists and turns on the way to the conclusion this is a great and intriguing tale.

In 'The House of Dolls', ex-Amsterdam detective Peter Vos is living on an old houseboat and still haunted by the disappearance of his daughter three years previously. Now, an ex-colleague visits him and tells him a policiticain's daughter has gone missing in similar circumstances. Suddenly Vos feels re-energised and up for the hunt.

Very few crime novelists are as reliable at capturing mood and pace as David Hewson who was hired to produce three novelisations of the TV series 'The Killing' for precisely this reason. So lay back and relax - you're in sure hands in this well-plotted, well-written crime thriller.

It appears that this is the first in a (planned) crime fiction series based in Amsterdam and featuring Detective Pieter Vos together with his rookie partner Laura Bakker. In this launch/pilot episode, a teenage girl and daughter of a leading city politician Wim Prins has gone missing. Vos has been living alone on a houseboat for a couple of years since retiring from the police force after failing to find his own daughter who disappeared under similar circumstances. Now the police chief appeals to Vos to help find Katja Prins. There are several other characters in the tale, including former 'don' and crime kingpin Theo Jansen, who has been in prison for such a long time that a former underworld rival has taken over most of his territory. There are horny ball-busting female politicians, ex-wives with big secrets, and all manner of corruption within both the law-enforcement and political powerbrokers. The story spans only a few days but dead bodies turn up quite regularly, and not always as a result of murder.

One of the underlying threads just beneath the surface of the story is an emotionally-scarred cop who has turned his back on the force (or maybe simply retired) and has no intention of returning. That's a rather well-worn premise, seen from authors such as Jo Nesbo, Mo Hayder, Ian Rankin and Simon Kernick to name but a few. Where House of Dolls is a cut above the rest in this particular regard is that Pieter Vos does not drop everything before the end of Chapter One and put his helmet back on. In this tale, he really is reluctant to go back and his apathy remains pretty much a constant throughout; if not for a personal involvement in the investigation he might not have gone back at all, even though he's barely 40 years old. So I liked the fact that his character was drawn the way it was from the outset and the author stuck to it; the somewhat familiar concept of a 'former ace detective' being invited back on the force did not, thankfully, fall victim to stereotype here.

And the story itself holds the attention at all times, not least because a lot happens within just the few days that span the pages of the tale. Vos' new sidekick Laura Bakker, for example, is another who might have fallen victim to stereotype but very clearly does not. The monkey on her back is being from 'up north' and not a metropolitan type like her hardened colleagues at Marnixstraat police station; she has an uphill task in proving her readiness and entitlement to work the big crimes in the big city, and fight off derisory remarks about the kinds of crime she used to deal with out in the sticks. Hers was another well-drawn character.

It's a very 'talky' novel, with not a great deal of narrative, and my main gripe is that the style of writing in that narrative is chopped short in what feels like a deliberately stylised way but which ends up being more of a distraction than of benefit. 1940s crime noir writers such as James Ellroy had it nailed, but Hewson hasn't quite got the method right here. Sentences are chopped in half or have no beginning, but when the prose switches to dialogue this style all but disappears, so that in a way there are two styles of writing throughout, flicking from one to the other, which I found a slight nuisance.

But I liked it, it wasn't a predictable story (with one very obvious exception) and the character-building kept it alive. It almost felt like a book based on a TV series (as Hewson did with The Killing) but as far as I know House of Dolls is an original piece of work. It quickly gave me the impression that it could be easily converted to the screen, such was its screenplay-like imagery.

I'm not sure I'll get the second in the series, assuming there is one, but I might be tempted. I just hope Hewson changes the prose a bit next time around.

David Hewson gets around. The other novel of his I've read, 'Villa of Mysteries', is set in Italy. This one is set in Amsterdam. I remember 'Villa' as being a fairly entertaining thriller which stretches the boundaries of plausibility here and there. The same is true of 'House of Dolls', but thrillers tend to be like that.

The story begins with clumsy young cop Laura Bakker trying to persuade former detective Pieter Vos to rejoin the force. These two are quickly established as the heroes in a novel packed with characters who might not be all they seem. In addition to two rival gang bosses and their mercenary sidekicks, there's a shady lawyer, three equally shady politicians, abrasive police officers, neurotic wives and several ladies of dubious virtue. Not surprisingly, the plot is fairly complex, with several strands and numerous troubled personal histories. At the centre of this is the disappearance of the daughter of a politician, but the novel is really a whodunit on a grand scale and that is its strength.

The action is concentrated over four days with a brief epilogue added. Hewson puts in little bursts of short sentences when a character is thinking which not only helps the prose kick on but also varies the pace. My only criticism is that some of the events are a little corny, but compared with other thriller writers it's a mild tendency. The location of Amsterdam and the symbolic use of dolls is reminiscent of Alistair McLean's classic 'Puppet on a Chain'. For me, 'House of Dolls' is a worthy successor.