According to my research (i.e. reading the note at the start of this book), Amsterdam will hold funerals for any anonymous people – those without family, for example – who die there. These services have flowers, coffee, music and a poem written especially for the person who passed away. It’s through this rather touching idea that we enter into Lonely Graves, by author Rodney Bolt and lawyer Britta Böhler, who together write as Britta Bolt. One of the team members who works to put a name to these bodies, Pieter Posthumus (luckily everyone in the book makes jokes about his name so I don’t have to), is tasked one May morning with tracking down the identity of a man who committed suicide in his nearly bare apartment. Posthumus is the best man for such a job: while his colleagues would take a perfunctory look around and then draw a line underneath someone’s identity, he will not give up. He is still holding on to clues that led him nowhere a month later, when another body appears, washed up in the Prinsengracht canal. The police, in a society full of tension between cultures and generations, aren’t concerned about the why of how the young Moroccan man got there – rather, Posthumus is there to find the who, and uncovers that part of his own family, frayed for so long but now finally coming together, may be the connection he needs.

This is the first book in a trilogy I’d be happy to continue with, and is the first crime book set in the Netherlands that I’ve read. Bolt’s Amsterdam, while home to a strong undercurrent of racism, is far too relaxed a place for high-speed car chases, with everyone scooting about on Vespas and bicycles and having extended lunches, but this doesn’t lessen the tension of what is a very engaging book with a protagonist so unwavering in his path that he would probably be a very frustrating co-worker (as he’d always show you up). But as someone to read about, Posthumus holds enormous literary appeal.

Fiona Hardy