Set in contemporary Amsterdam, on streets we walked along in our 2014 visit. Plenty of local colour, canals, bicycles, New Market stalls, the new city hall, Amstel River.
Told in four parts, (1) the protagonist, Peter Posthumous (yes, some name), (2) the Moroccans, some of whom are up to no good, (3) the security agents monitoring the Moroccans (some of whom are up to no good), and (4) the security boss who seems to be playing his own game. It switches back and forth frequently and at other times stays in one part/ voice for a while to develop a point.
Apart from the local colour, I also got a recipe which I will try out on the lab rats at home in due course. I found several recipes for the dish on Serious Eats.
This is the first of a trilogy so the story telling is attenuated, recipes, coffees, etc which slows the tempo.
As said, local colour, it starts with details about flushing the canals over night between midnight and 4 am and how that circulates the water.
Peter Posthumous is a city official who looks after the funerals of unclaimed bodies. He is an obsessive and can never let anything go and so makes mountains (or is it dragons, Don?) where there are none. As a result he has been moved from one job to another and may yet be moved again. That is a nice set-up and his concern to treat the unclaimed dead with respect is touching, though it seems more about him than them.
I bought at Waterstone in the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam in June 2014.
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