Jacob Vis
The Beekeeper
Big Mac in thriller form
A criminal gang from Eastern Europe, the female owner of a country estate in South Africa and a CID man, Van Arkel, in the small town of IJsselmonde. It sounds like an improbable list, but the old master Jacob Vis knows how to pull all the strands together in an excellent thriller. At stake in the power struggle is the country estate Morren and the family bank of the immensely rich Van Walsum family. The heiress, Lady Gonda van Walsum returns home to save the estate and family bank from going under. This also brings her into contact with beekeeper Petersen, a breeder of bee species. A silent man, but one with a secret past and someone who, above all else, is bent on revenge.
Vis has a refreshing style of writing. He explains a lot, while still managing to keep the story moving along at a good pace. The plot of De imker (The Beekeeper) is tortuous, but fortunately the writer does not get lost in the subplots he occasionally ventures into. The plot remains graspable and, despite the many subjects and great gestures, also believable.
As in all his books, Vis is highly topical in his plots – as here, for example, in touching on the conflict about bank fusions. The decision of the Golden Noose jury to nominate this book by Jacob Vis is thus also a logical one. For the writer, it means the fifth nomination of his career. That speaks volumes about the quality of Jacob Vis’s work.
