Saskia Noort’s Back to the Coast grabbed me within the first three pages: Maria is a single mom with two kids who just returned from having an abortion. Before the reader has a chance to empathize with Maria, the threatening letters arrive:
The letterbox rattled and the mail landed on the floor with a soft thud. . . I hauled myself up and shuffled over to the door, where I picked up the damp pile of envelopes. Two letters from the taxman, a bank statement, a reminder for my six-monthly dental check-up and a postcard. A black-and-white photograph of cute pink baby feet. Tiny feet smelling of little white lambs and baby oil, tiny feet I wanted to kiss and cuddle, tiny feet I was mourning. What a horrible coincidence. My womb was still throbbing with pain. . . I picked up the card with trembling fingers and caressed the crinkly toes, the delicate heels. I swallowed the tears that welled up and turned over the card.
Maria! You’re a viper. A slut. You murdered your child. You don’t deserve to have children. You don’t deserve to have a life. I’ve been watching your case for years. Someone ought to punish you, whore!
I’ll be watching you.
The threats quickly escalate causing Maria to rush to her sister’s for safety. However, with all good thrillers, there isn’t an escape, just a turn in the plot.
Back to the Coast takes place in Amsterdam and in a seaside village on the Dutch coast. The book gives a reader a gentle view of the stereotypical free and easy lifestyle of Amsterdam with Maria, a mother largely unconcerned with a conventional life. Maria sings in a band, her two children have different fathers, neither of whom she married, and she never turns down a drink. However, her strong suits are love and compassion. In contrast, Maria’s sister Ans represents the traditional, taciturn, stern attitude of the Dutch. Her house is sterile. Disapproval drips from her. Her life is a series of filling obligations.
The author writes full characters for Maria and Ans, but the other characters are a bit shallow and one dimensional. A couple of characters don’t seem to fit organically in the plot, they feel plopped down to move the action forward. The first half of the book is a page turner as the plot is set, but the resolution becomes too obvious too soon for me. Maria suggests several times that the person terrorizing her could be an anti-abortion maniac, but the response is always along the lines of “this isn’t the US, we don’t do that here.” Of course, they are right; the culprit in a good thriller isn’t a stranger in the bushes, it’s a character we already know. For me, the answer was too easy by the time I was two-thirds into the book.
Despite its flaws, Back to the Coast is a fun, summer thriller with a female angle. So many of the characters in thrillers are men, this book felt unique because the strong characters are women grappling with female issues.
Back to the Coast is published by Bitter Lemon Press, an English publisher that specializes in crime and noir novels from “faraway places.” Bitter Lemon Press believes that “to understand a culture you need only to examine its crimes.”
Tags: foreign crime novel, foreign thriller, translated thriller
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