Zen Cops

By Martha Duffy

THE JAPANESE CORPSE by Janwillem van de Wetering Houghton Mifflin; 280 pages; $7.95

Agatha Christie said that if she had ever imagined, as a young woman, that she would spend 50 years writing thrillers, she would never have made Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple so old. Perhaps, but several of the elderly detectives prove to be the hardiest. The latest ancient to carry a series on his frail back is an Amsterdam police commissioner, or commissaris. He wears waistcoats and a watch chain; he has rheumatism, unfailing gaiety and humor, but no name. The Japanese Corpse is the fifth mystery he has appeared in, and he gives every promise of providing an annuity for his creator.

A Dutchman, Van de Wetering is a student of Zen who has spent time in a Japanese monastery and now lives in America. His new book draws on his knowledge of Japan. In outline the plot is very conventional. The commissaris and his two assistants, Adjutant Grijpstra and Sergeant De Gier, are required to search out and destroy a Japanese connection that supplies drugs and stolen art to Amsterdam. The villains are the yakusa, Japan's Mafia, who of course have their own extralegal culture with its warriors, taboos, codes and pretty girls.

The author obviously knows the methods of his florid villains very well --but seems to have only a casual interest in them. He nudges the story along every so often, but the entire climax is accomplished in exactly one paragraph. The rest of the time he browses amiably among his policemen. At one point the commisaris quotes a Chinese philosopher:

"Hurry is a fundamental error." It is not one Van de Wetering is guilty of.

Fortunately the author has a genuine gift for characterization. Grijpstra is something of a slob mismarried to another slob of grotesque dimension who stares at TV all day and wears innumerable pin curlers to bed. De Gier is a romantic who is too realistic to marry. He prefers the company of his flute and his neurotic Siamese cat, Oliver.

Van de Wetering's trio are quirky, but compassionate, peaceable men. Even his yakusa are complex people who are neither James Bond cartoons nor clinical studies in sadism. This series will probably flourish not because of ingenious plots but because the characters are good enough to carry a conventional novel.

In their offhand approach to this rather rigid form, the commissaris books most closely resemble the mysteries of Nico las Freeling. But Van de Wetering's inspiration was the late Robert van Gulik, a mystery writer and Oriental scholar who was once the Dutch Ambassador to Japan. He appears briefly in The Japanese Corpse -- as a helpful ambassador.

Indeed, there is probably a little of him in the wise commissaris. Practical Hollander though he is, the old fellow reminds one of the ancient Chinese in Yeats who stare on "all the tragic scene . . .

Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,/ Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay. "

--Martha Duffy

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