A Cold Death in Amsterdam

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 . . . '[Meerman's] painstaking police work is undermined by emotional turmoil in a novel brilliantly evoking the isolation of a woman with an unbearable weight on her conscience' The Sunday Times 'The book succeeds as a portrait of both a city and, in its heroine, a delightfully dysfunctional personality' Sunday Express 'A promising debut novel with a very different background' Irish Independent 'Anja de Jager's debut novel is a tightly written, cleverly plotted whodunit that keeps the reader guessing almost to the last page' Irish Examiner 'An impressive debut . . . De Jager is as good on dodgy family relations as she is on police procedure' The Times 'De Jager manages to circumvent the overfamiliar. The evocation of a bitterly cold Amsterdam is worthy of Nicholas Freeling's Van der Valk books' The Independent