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Tuesday, July 28, 2015

From Bruges with Love by Pieter Aspe

Author: Pieter Aspe
Publisher: Open Road Media
Date of publication: July 2015

Behind the glamorous facade of elite Belgian society lies a seedy world unseen by the public eye—but nothing stays hidden forever 

Inspector Pieter Van In is begrudgingly finishing up a healthy lunch when he hears the news: While restoring their farmhouse, the Vermasts have found a skeleton in the backyard. Van In, who happens to be married to the deputy public prosecutor, is determined to solve the case in double-quick time and squeeze in one last vacation before the birth of his first child.

But this murder is trickier than it looks, and Van In soon finds himself in murky waters. The Vermasts' land belonged to the most prominent businessman in West Flanders before it was suddenly handed over to a right-wing charity. The heavily endowed foundation appears to have no expenditures or investments. So who's financing it—and why?

Before he knows it, Van In finds himself in the middle of a complex web—one that involves high-level officials, local law enforcement, and common thugs. The harder he tries to unravel the thread, the more difficult it becomes to uncover the secrets that the charity's benefactors are trying to hide. This time Van In will have to risk lives to find out the truth.


From Bruges with Love is number 33 in this series with Inspector Pieter Van In, but only the third (I believe) released in the US to date.  I wasn't aware of that going into the book.  Had I known, I probably would have skipped it. I can sometimes read a series out of order if it only has 2 or three books in it, but not 33! It ended up being a DNF for me.  I was hoping for a good mystery, but I kept getting lost in the story.  I felt like I was missing valuable back story between the main characters.  I would have gotten all of that had I started from book one.  I'm not sure why the foreign books end up getting published in the US like this.  I also felt like a lot of the names were very similar, so I had a hard time keeping track of characters. It  just wasn't my kind of book.





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