The Organ Grinder: A Dutchman Historical Mystery

Maan Meyers's "The Organ Grinder" is a mystery story set at the end of the 19th century. This page turner, the seventh in their Dutchman Historical series, revolves around a fortune to come to a prostitute, Irene Hull, aka Delia Swann who doesn't live to see, let alone enjoy, her coming inheritance, but neither do a half dozen others, some involved with the young woman as well as others who just happened by at the wrong time. To heighten the tension, in addition to Delia's death, subplots include a missing gold heart-shaped locket of special significance to the victim and her stalkers. Maan Meyers is expecially talented at characterization both in physical and personality attributes, and though there are a dozen or so, Meyers clearly distinguishes them one from the other without demeaning the reader with trite, cardboard portraits. One of the strengths of the book is its effective use of dialogue to portray character. In that process, the language is often coarse and racist, painful to read, but I never felt it was gratituitous vulgarity or out of character. That was 1899 and that's the way it was in working class 1899. The ugliness of that language also caused me to be grateful for the progress of 110 years. There were also other moments of the use of language that cause one to perceive things in fresh ways, e.g., "watching fireflies having themselves a light flashing party"; (re: automobiles) "You didn't have to feed it anything but gasoline and oil. You didn't have to clean up after it. And it didn't bite you"; "cooler, damper air blew through the woods bearing mixed perfumes;" etc. A joy of "The Organ Grinder" also lies in its great sense of place and time; never tedious, the novels shows you the environment of the era, its architecture, the burst of energy prompting developing corporations and inventions, e.g, the motor car and the National Automobile Association. This book is jam-packed with history on every page, presented through descriptions of clothing, whorehouses as well as silk hat brothels, etc. Finally, I found it interesting that the book is written in short, dated and timed chapters which accelerate the pace of an already fast-moving novel. In that development the authors can hold separate six or eight characters and six points of view, all roiling around death and dying, simultaneously victims and heroes desperately struggling to find the locket, escape with the money, bring justice or revenge to the killer. "The Organ Grinder" is a page turner so addictive you won't be able to put it down. Only in the denouement does it falter where the final pages seem to wander and lack some of the clarity of all that has come before.