Charles den Tex

Charles den Tex (b. 1952) is the Netherlands’ leading thriller writer. His work has won all the major prizes in crime fiction and has been translated into several languages. He was born in Camberwell (Australia) in 1952 and moved to the Netherlands in 1958. In London he studied photography and film. Three of his novels have won the Gouden Strop: Schijn van kans (Chance in Hell, 2002), De macht van meneer Miller (The Power of Mr Miller, 2006) and Cel (Cell, 2008). His work is often compared to that of John Grisham, Michael Crichton and Michael Ridpath. His thrillers often take place against a background of trade and industry, and involve fraud with regard to deals, mergers, and information streams – invariably resulting in murder with the aim of securing financial and political interests.

Chance in Hell

(De Geus, 2002, 288 pages)

A few years ago, when Aad Jacobs, former CEO of the ING Group, appeared on a Dutch television show, he was offered a challenge: if he could come up with the plot of a thriller, the show would find a writer for the book. Jacobs accepted the challenge and devised a plot in which a small Dutch investment bank manages to land a major deal: the takeover of an American cable company by a larger Dutch cable company. The dealmaker himself, however, never gets to finalize the deal.

Mr Miller

(De Geus, 2005, 392 pages)

An office without a computer has become an anomaly. Nowadays no office can do without, and in almost every home there’s one softly humming somewhere. But what if all those computers have a secret little back door? What if there is an organization that has access to all those pc’s and uses the information for its own dark purposes? Charles den Tex has taken this nightmare scenario as the basis for Mr Miller and it won him the award for the best Dutch-language thriller in 2006.

Cell

(De Geus, 2008, 377 pages)

Cel (Cell) has won Charles den Tex the Gouden Strop Award 2008 yet again for best thriller. He deserves the prize more than ever for this sophisticated and topical novel about identity fraud on the internet combined with the threat of terror. Communications advisor Michael Bellicher, has witnessed an accident, is held by the police on suspicion of involvement in a separate, fatal hit-and-run. But he has never heard of the village where the incident took place, never mind ever having been there. Nor does he own the car involved, despite its being registered in his name.

$The Heir$

The Heir

(De Geus, 2013, 376 pages)

The backdrop to Charles den Tex’s new thriller is a village in the south of the Dutch province of Limburg. It is a world where everyone knows everyone else and no one can hide their origins, a world of secrets and smouldering feuds.

$The Forgotten Story of an Unfaltering Love in Wartime$

The Forgotten Story of an Unfaltering Love in Wartime

(De Geus, 2014, 466 pages)

Following a tip from a friend and film producer, the authors found themselves on the trail of a love story set in the Dutch East Indies during an all but forgotten episode of World War II. Through the diaries of Guus and Lienke Hagers, the authors have reconstructed the dramatic tale of a couple torn apart by war.

$A Woman Lost$

A Woman Lost

(Harper Collins, 2019, 384 pages)

In Den Tex’s cynical tech universe, a young woman goes in search of her identity. Is she a remote-controlled cyborg, or does she have an autonomous existence and past?

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