24 dec

Read ‘De Erfgenaam’ today. A thriller written by Charles den Tex. I have read most of his books through his career. Starting with the book ‘Schijn van Kans’ a book he co-wrote with Aad Jacobs, the former ceo of bankinsurer ING.
I was reminded of several conversations I had with Jacobs, all of them for the book my former colleague Bert van Dijk and I wrote about the investor revolt at the dutch publisher VNU.
It is difficult for me not to sympathize with someone I have a conversation with for more than fifteen minutes. This was definitely the case with Aad Jacobs. A wonderful dutch example of self-depreciation in combination with a strong belief that in ‘his days’ everything was a lot better.
Jacobs had ‘a dream’ about writing a thriller and was teamed up with Den Tex who wrote ‘Schijn van Kans (Faint Possibility) based on the ideas of Jacobs.
Den Tex is a good writer, but his stories have gotten much better after his cooperation with Jacobs. It seems to me that the understanding of life in high financial circles that Jacobs had improved the understanding of these lives that Den Tex had. Several of his books have been sold to 20th Century Fox. Can’t wait to see the movies.
De Erfgenaam (The Heritant) is a book about a centuries old family in the southern part of The Netherlands that made its money through mining. The success of the family was not only based on straight transactions, but also because of a stretching of the truth to the advantage of the family. And on completely illegal activities.
In a way it is the most shallow book I have read in the past few months. But the delight of starting a book early in the morning, laying with my legs up on a sofa, and finishing it before supper, is one of the pleasures of the Christmas break.
Then I had to go and write some Christmas poems for everyone. If I could spend the rest of my life writing these kind of nonsense poems, I would be a happy man, I guess. Building some kind of message based on glueing two sentences to each other, sentences that somehow rhime, is a guilty pleasure.
And presents of course. Rob Wijnberg about the future of journalism, a history book about the causes of the First World War and a little statue of the Pastor of Ars, those are presents I will have fun with for the next few weeks.
But then my problem with ‘De Erfgenaam’. Someone who hasn’t done anything wrong, gets drawn into a story where he might be considered responsible for things his ancestors did, but then accepts responsibility for a crime that he might very easily not have been responsible for – but by refusing acknowledgment of responsibility, he becomes the guilty person. I find that hard to acknowledge.
But still, the novel (crime story) ends. But the reader knows that is not the end of the story. If there is not a sequel pretty soon, I am going to be disappointed with this Den Tex novel. Although I think it might be sold to hollywood, expecting a sequence, which seems to be the Hollywood way.