The Midas Murders: An Inspector Van In Novel

by Pieter Aspe

Overview

In the second novel by the internationally bestselling Pieter Aspe, Inspector Van In races against the clock to thwart a series of terrorist plots
One quiet snow-covered Sunday morning in Bruges, a prominent business executive is found dead in the streets, apparently due to an alcoholic hemorage, but for Inspector Van In, there is a something about the autopsy that does not add up. When he questions the businessman’s friend, a Dutchman, he too is found dead the next morning, burned to death in a house fire.
When there is an explosion in the middle of a popular tourist area in downtown Bruges, Van In strives to find the connection between the three incidents, but no one is coming forward to claim responsibility for this terrorist attack. Just an anonymous letter to the police, threatening more bombings—unless they cooperate with a series of demands that would undermine the entire city government.
Aided by the spunky and beautiful assistant DA Hannelore Maartens, Inspector Van In finds himself enmeshed in the case that threatens not just the lives of countless of innocent people, but the heart of the city he loves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605986531
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	12/15/2014
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Pieter Aspe is the author of a series detective stories starring inspector Van In. The Square of Revenge was the first novel to be translated into English. Pieter lives in Bruges, Belgium, and is one of the most popular writers contemporary writers in the Flemish language.

Editorial Reviews

Van In’s intuitive powers of observation are sharp and his insider’s view of this ancient and grandly aloof city are priceless. It’s all intricately plotted by Aspe, and handily solved by Van In between bouts of colorful behavior.
”

Marilyn Stasio - The New York Times Book Review

Should appeal to readers who love Northern European noir.… [A] good destination mystery.
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Booklist

Aspe has been likened to another Belgian novelist, the astonishingly prolific Georges Simenon.
”

The Washington Post

09/02/2013
What brainy, bodacious Bruges deputy prosecutor Hannelore Martens finds irresistible about irascible, alcoholic, and insolvent Asst. Commissioner Pieter Van In, the hero of Aspe’s long-running Belgian series, remains a mystery by the end of this convoluted second installment to be translated into English (after The Square of Revenge). Despite his pressing personal problems—including the bank’s threat to foreclose on his house—Van In suddenly faces some even more urgent police work: finding out who murdered a prominent German travel executive and who bombed the statue of beloved Flemish poet Guido Gezelle. Both are high-priority cases in the tourist-dependent medieval municipality. Between hangovers, mood swings, and other distractions, Van In starts to connect the dots of a vast conspiracy. Though the novel becomes increasingly engaging as the plot coalesces, it’s possible that Van In, like the whiskey-cola concoction he and many of the other characters are so fond of, may be an acquired taste. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

The Flemish Georges Simenon.

Le Figaro

A very likable and very politically incorrect group of detectives. Humor is permanent, the plot iswell constructed, and the whole story is extremely exotic.

L'Express

An exciting murder mystery, a punch ofhumor, and a generous serving of sex are among the highlights of this series.

Crimezone.nl (Belgium)

2013-11-24
Not only its citizens, but Bruges itself is under attack in this second case for Assistant Commissioner Pieter Van In to reach American shores. One moment, Adriaan Frenkel, a visitor from Holland, has no thoughts but whether he'll ever get a proper drink at the Villa Italiana; the next, he's listening avidly to an unexpectedly revealing conversation between two drinkers at the next table, local industrialist Georges Vandekerckhove and his German companion Dietrich Fiedle. "The son of that bastard!" Frenkel reflects about Fiedle. From that point on, things move swiftly. The next morning, Fiedle is found dying in Blinde Ezel Street, apparently the victim of an accidental hematoma. There'd be no case for Van In and his sometime lover, Assistant District Attorney Hannelore Maartens, if a photograph Fiedle was carrying of Michelangelo's Madonna didn't seem to suggest a link to an attack on a statue of Belgium's greatest poet, Guido Gezelle. Mayor Pierre Moens and Chief Commissioner Carton, ever alert to terrorists but always looking under the wrong rocks for them, are no help at all. So Van In and Hannelore mount their own one-cylinder investigation. The first result, predictably, is an official reprimand. As the police focus on the links to the Mouvement Wallon Révolutionnaire, however, Van In, a hard-bitten, hard-drinking, hard-wenching cop whose couplings with the whore Véronique are so inveterate that he doesn't even think he's cheating on his prosecutor, closes in on a plot that links the Nazi hoarding of Old Masters half a century ago to a fiendishly modern scheme to manipulate the real estate market in historic Bruges. Only Van In's intuition and his knack for noticing important details can explain how this raffish cop could possibly keep his job in this jokey, down-and-dirty tour of a town that can't make up its mind whether it's a museum for tourists or a haven for crooks.

Kirkus Reviews