Britta Bolt Book order

Personal gain or political principle? That's the question Pieter Posthumus must answer in the third of the Amsterdam Lonely Funerals series, when a controversial delegate at an environmental conference is attacked and left for dead...

Pieter Posthumus is a member of Amsterdam's Lonely Funerals team. It's his responsibility to give the anonymous or abandoned dead a decent send-off. A determined, passionate man, Postumus cannot let things go when they don't seem quite right. When a young Moroccan immigrant is found in the Prinsengracht canal, the police write it off as an accident or suicide. Posthumus is sure there's more to it than that. He takes up the case and starts digging - an investigation that leads to him getting caught up in a terror plot and in the way of the Dutch secret service.

The second in the atmospheric Amsterdam-set crime series, which combines the city's old-world charm with contemporary issues of corruption, immigration and crime. A minute can make all the difference... Pieter Posthumus is enjoying a quiet drink in his favourite bar when the screaming starts. A minute later, the owner of the guesthouse next door rushes in: one of her tenants has been murdered. Marloes, the guesthouse owner, is an odd but kind soul. Posthumus cannot believe it when she is arrested - for both her tenant Zig's murder and another death years before. He knows there are questions unanswered: what is the link between the two cases? Why are people so keen to think Marloes is guilty? And why did Zig paint just one picture every year - a copy of a Dutch master, but with one peculiar twist? As his investigation progresses, he comes to see that a few minutes can mean all the difference in the world: between saving a life and taking one; between innocence and guilt. And that sometimes asking questions leads to a truth that's hard to bear.

The first in a gripping Dutch crime series which uncovers a side of Amsterdam the tourists don't see; for fans of Donna Leon, Michael Dibdin and Fred Vargas.