A topical crime novel set in Amsterdam. It's the second in a series but fine as a standalone. A good read for fans of the genre.

Henk van der Pol is a 56 year old Dutch detective in a tight spot. After the fallout from his last case, he’s a cop without a home. So when the Justice Minister calls with a job offer, he’s willing to listen. It’s not exactly a cushy assignment but he has little choice & fewer options.

They want to add him to an elite team hunting an international ring of pedophiles. The investigation centres around the Night Market, a site on the dark web where perpetrators share videos. But Henk’s job is not to catch a pedophile. It’s to catch a rat. Someone on the team has been leaking information to help the bad guys stay one step ahead of the cops & the Justice Minister wants Henk to clean house.

The situation quickly escalates after Henk joins the team & we begin to realize this is just a pit stop in a case that will have Henk chasing rumours & suspects from Amsterdam to London. The scope of the conspiracy at its heart is mind boggling & decades in the making.

This is a page turner that demands you pay attention. The characters Henk encounters have elevated shiftiness to an art form. As the plot unfolds, there’s an unsettling undercurrent fueled by a lack of reliable narrators. The relationships between these people are positively labyrinthine & it’s hard to know who’s on the same team. At times I wasn’t even sure if I believed Henk. His last case left him traumatized & he’s having problems with his memory. But is it truly as a result of PTSD or a convenient way of covering his own actions? And was he sent to find the truth or being set up to take a fall?

Despite that, he’s a sympathetic character. He’s at an age where he realizes his best days may be in the rearview mirror & the constant battle with crime & office politics is taking its toll. The job has been tough on his marriage & he struggles to maintain a relationship with his grown daughter. As horrible truths emerge, he even begins to eye old colleagues with suspicion. Henk is left feeling isolated & riddled with self doubt & you can’t help but pull for the guy as the situation becomes increasingly dangerous.

Plenty of action & the need for answers keep this moving at a brisk pace. More than a few bodies hit the ground but it’s not something the author dwells on. The child abuse aspect of the plot contains enough detail to further the story but is never graphic or gratuitous. Several of the subplots are continued from the first book & while a decent amount of background info is given, I think I’d recommend reading it first. This can be read as a stand alone but knowing how things played out in the past gives this book an added punch.

The setting of Amsterdam & its surroundings provides a real sense of place that makes it easy to slip into this tense & compelling story. If you’re someone who enjoys those 1000 piece puzzles, this is for you.