Book 7: Lotte Meerman

AMSTERDAM 1980

‍A city in turmoil: rife with drug abuse, riots and terror threats in the run-up to the coronation of Queen Beatrix. As Amsterdam's police force is overwhelmed by the civil war between law enforcement and squatters, local neighbourhood policeman Piet Huizen is seconded from his hometown Alkmaar to this cauldron. It should be daunting but he feels strangely liberated from the responsibilities of home and everyday work. Together with his three colleagues from across the country, he's only there temporarily and can even laugh at his own provincial outlook. Until a student goes missing.

‍AMSTERDAM NOW

Detective Lotte Meerman doesn't want to hear about her father Piet Huizen's past because his month in Amsterdam in 1980 led directly to her parent's divorce. The less she knows, the better it is. Then two men die. Their deaths are not treated as suspicious but Lotte realises there is something that links the deceased men: they were both children of her father's former team-mates. And the more she investigates the circumstances of their deaths, the more Lotte comes to realise that she could be next on the list...

Book 6: Lotte Meerman

Keeping it in the family...

After her painful divorce four years ago, Lotte Meerman has kept well away from Arjen, her ex-husband, and his new wife Nadia. So when they both visit her at central Amsterdam's police station to report Nadia's father missing, Lotte is shocked - but hides it well.

Then two days later a dog walker reports the discovery of a body near the Orange Locks, built to keep the sea out of Amsterdam, and the missing man is identified as Nadia's father. Lotte wants to stay away from the investigation but his widow, Margreet, keeps searching her out as she has no idea it was her daughter who was pivotal in the marriage break-up. She wrongly identifies Lotte as a friend and tells her that Patrick had been a great husband and father, and a successful businessman. But when Lotte digs into Patrick's past, she discovers instead a failing company and a man with a history of making unwanted sexual advances to his female employees.

Margreet is unaware of any of this. And the more Lotte investigates the dead man's past, the more she finds to suggest that her ex-husband is somehow involved in his death...

Book 5: Lotte Meerman

When Lotte Meerman is faced with the choice of interviewing the latest victim in a string of assaults or talking to a man who claims he really isn't dead, she picks the interview. After all, the man cannot possibly be who he claims he is: Andre Nieuwkamp was murdered as a teenager over thirty years ago, and it had been a police success story nationwide when the skeletal remains found in the dunes outside Amsterdam had been identified, and the murderer subsequently arrested.

Yet concerned about this encounter, Lotte goes to the Hotel Mondrian the next day to talk to the man, but what she finds is his corpse. And his passport shows that he wasn't Andre Nieuwkamp as he said, but Theo Brand, a British citizen.

Subsequent DNA tests reveal that the man was Andre Nieuwkamp so now Lotte has a double mystery on her hands and needs to figure out not only why Andre waited so long to tell anyone he was still alive, but also who was the teenager murdered in the dunes all those decades ago.

Book 4: Lotte Meerman

Guilty until proven innocent . . .

It's hard for anyone to have their work scrutinised in public. For Amsterdam-based detective Lotte Meerman, listening to the Right to Justice podcast as they dissect one of her old cases is made even more harrowing as every episode makes fresh accusations of a bungled operation.

As the podcast reveals hidden facts about the arrest of Ruud Klaver, the one thing Lotte is still convinced of is that it was Ruud who was guilty of the murder of a student near Rembrandt Square ten years earlier. However, when Ruud Klaver then dies in suspicious circumstances, only hours after the final podcast proving his innocence is broadcast, Lotte has to accept that maybe she was wrong.

With the dead man's family passionately against her inclusion in the investigation into his death, the only way for Lotte to discover who killed him is by finding out where she went wrong all those years ago - if indeed she did go wrong. As Lotte digs deeper and involves colleagues from her past, it starts to look like the murder in Rembrandt Square was part of an even bigger deception...

Book 3: Lotte Meerman

Where do your loyalties lie? With the truth or with your colleagues?

Drinking outside a canal-side bar on a perfect summer's evening, Lotte is witness to the fatal stabbing of Piotr Mazur, a Polish security guard working in one of the city's department stores. As Lotte starts to investigate Mazur's death, all the facts point to him being a small-time drug dealer, and his murder is treated as a minor complication in another team's larger narcotics case. Yet Lotte remains unconvinced; having viewed the man's ordered, unchaotic flat and spoken to his colleagues, she can't help but believe he was being set up.

And in the bar, moments before Piotr was killed, Lotte saw a woman pass him a photo of a child. Shebecomes convinced that his death wasn't a revenge-killing over drugs at all, and has to now think carefully about what to do for the best, especially as key evidence in Mazur's murder comes from someone she knows she cannot trust.

Book 2: Lotte Meerman

Detective Lotte Meerman is convinced the death of Frank Stapel, a painter and decorator, isn't an accident after she and his widow Tessa find a skeleton in a sports bag in his left luggage locker at Amsterdam Central train station.

The remains date from the Second World War and Lotte's colleagues consider it of minor importance . . . until forensic tests show that amongst the bones is the arm bone of a crime boss who recently went missing.

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Book 1: Lotte Meerman

Set in Amsterdam, the novel introduces Lotte Meerman, a Cold Case detective still recovering from the emotional devastation of her previous investigation. A tip-off leads Lotte to an unresolved ten-year-old murder case in which her father was the lead detective. When she discovers irregularities surrounding the original investigation that make him a suspect, she decides to cover for him. She doesn't tell her boss about the family connection and jeopardises her career by hiding evidence. Now she has to find the real murderer before her acts are discovered, otherwise her father will go to jail and she will lose her job, the one thing in life she still takes pride in . . .