The Dinner Club Paperback – April 1, 2007

I agree with a previous reviewer that the writing was sort of banal. It seemed like a true representation of the point of view of the character Karen. And I feel a little unfair in knocking the book for not being something else.It was interesting to see the depiction of the lives of a certain strata of dutch society. Except for the frequent use of bicycles, things seem pretty much the same as the analogous suburban american social set.

I loved everything about the show

Saskia Noort's The Dinner Club is a blend of mystery and social commentary with a good dash of hard-core romance thrown in. The story begins with an unknown male decrying, with heavy overtones of suicide, his failed marriage and the imminent breakup of his home. The saga then swiftly shifts to the close-knit group of friends known as "The Dinner Club" as they gather outside the burning home of Evert and Babbette and their 2 sons. Evert dies in the fire and, as the remaining friends rally to offer aid and comfort to the family survivors, they immediately accept Babbette's explanation that the psychologically unstable Evert tried to kill them all. Karen and her husband Michel agree to temporarily house Babbette and children after another couple abruptly reneges on their previous offer to do so. Two weeks later Hanneke, Karen's best friend among the group members, dies in a fall from a hotel balcony. While the police raise the possibility of suicide, Karen is convinced Hanneke would never have killed herself and begins questioning other members of their social circle.As Karen investigates Hanneke's death, she reveals a self-absorbed collection of "beautiful people" whose shared loneliness and isolation in the ex-urbs of Amsterdam has drawn them together. At first, just the wives socialize, but eventually their husbands also become part of the pack. In addition to dinner parties, tennis, European vacations, and elaborate parties to celebrate almost any occasion, the men begin creating business deals with Simon, the handsome alpha-dog financier whom Karen finds irresistibly attractive. As she investigates her friends' deaths, she is shocked by revelations of several affairs among group members and lots of other secrets that make it impossible to know who is telling the truth. Where has the quest for money, power, and social status led these couples? Is one among them a very clever killer?Noort's first-person narrative, as told by Karen, renders a believably caustic portrayal of female relationships that form in the pressure cooker of suburban elitism. They all strive to project and maintain a facade of perfection: the perfect marriage, the perfect family, the perfect home. Add some steamy sexual encounters and you have a tasty meal if not a gourmet dinner.The Dinner Club is an appealing mystery whose setting adds a distinctive flavor to the plot but the book should also appeal to non-traditional romance readers. However, devotees of the cozy mystery might want to skip the steamy appetizers and just devour the main course.

The Dinner Club is another quality offering from Bitter Lemon Press, this one from the Netherlands. It is a well done translation by Paul Vincent from its original Dutch edition.Life in the suburbs of Amsterdam can be comfortable but also restrictive. When Karen and her family move there for a more peaceful place to raise the children she finds it a lonely existence. Used to her busy days working and taking care of her family, Karen is disturbed by the lack of activity and friends in this small town. So she is thrilled to get to know some of the other women who also live in the area. They quickly become a social group, a dinner club of 5 women and their husbands. They are the upper class of the neighborhood, the comfortably elite with assets and attitude. But when one of the men dies when his house burns down and one of the women falls off the balcony of a hotel, it begins to look like it is not such a happy group after all.The Dinner Club looks at the under side of suburban life. It is not only a tale of crime, mystery and suspense but also a look at the role social status plays in a small town. It deals with betrayal of business partners, spouses and friends. The plot takes few turns, the ending is not as predictable as one might expect. Each character is a sketch of a role, a piece of the unit that makes up The Dinner Club.

After Karen moved into the village from Amsterdam with her husband, Michel, and their two daughters, it took her a while to make friends. But finally she found Hanneke, and through her three other woman, and the five of them became fast friends. They dubbed themselves "The Dinner Club" and became a mutual support group--they drank and ate and vacationed together, watched one another's kids. Their husbands did business together. But when the book opens one of their houses is on fire. Someone dies. And the tragedy, together with another which follows shortly afterward, lays bare various truths, among them that the relationships among the members of the Club are more superficial than Karen had supposed. Nor were the members' five marriages as happy as she had supposed.Saskia Noort's The Dinner Club follows the downward trajectory of the Club's relationships. As things disintegrate, Karen comes increasingly to suspect that the fire was fueled by something more than middle-aged angst and alcohol. The book is filled with a quiet menace, and Noort does a great job of keeping us guessing, our suspicions alighting now on one character, now another. After this slow, steady build-up of tension the book's conclusion, an explosion of violence, is jarring. It doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the book. The conclusion also left me thinking I might have to re-read some chapters to figure out what, precisely, was the truth behind the complex of relationships among the five Dinner Club members and their husbands.The Dinner Club, which was originally pubished in Dutch in 2004, has been a best-seller in the Netherlands, and film rights to the book have been sold. It would, I think, translate well to the screen.

In my continuing quest for good European thrillers in translation, I turned to Holland and this book, although frankly I wish I hadn't. It's the story of a small group of rich couples that live in a village outside Amsterdam. The wives spend most of their day drinking coffee in expensive cafés, playing tennis, shopping for expensive clothes and gossiping about each other, the full yuppie menu in fact. Into this claustrophobic atmosphere comes Karen, a self-employed graphic designer, who has moved to the country with her husband and two young daughters. At first she finds it difficult to makes friends, but later forms a `dinner club' with the families of four of the other residents.All goes well until one of the husbands dies in a fire that destroys his house and almost kills his wife and two children. He has recently suffered a psychotic breakdown and there is some evidence that he started the fire deliberately. This tragedy is quickly followed by the death of one of the wives, who falls from a hotel balcony. These two events allow existing simmering suspicions and jealousies within the group to surface. There are accusations of adulterous relationships and dubious business dealing between some of the husbands, amongst other things. Many dull, uninteresting pages are devoted to the resulting squabbles and soul searching amongst the wives, which add precious little to the story. They are made worse by the very pedestrian style of the writing, rather Mills & Boone. One could read this as a satire on the rural yuppie life, but I suspect that was not the author's intention.Karen, based on what she thinks she knows about the characters of the deceased pair, becomes convinced that both deaths were not accidental and is sucked into a rather desultory police investigation, which is tied up with an investigation of the tax affairs of one of the husbands, an amoral odious character who is an obvious `bad un', and who seems to have a financial hold on the other husbands. Karen's amateurish blundering around, helped by a woman police officer who has a personal interest in one of the suspects, eventually leads her to the correct conclusion, and the murderer is confirmed in a final violent scene in a hotel room. The picture is completed and `tied in a pink ribbon' with the reconciliation between Karen and her husband.Although this book sold 300,000 copies in Holland, I could find little to recommend it. A substantial fraction of the book is devoted to the pointless lives of the group, but I found the details of their jealousies and petty betrayals of little interest. Incidentally, although there are at least four children around, they play no significant role whatsoever. It only becomes a thriller late in the book, and even then the action is all too obvious. Finally, about the only thing remotely Dutch is the fact that everyone smokes cigars and some ride bicycles, hardly unique characteristics.

Karen, her husband Michel and their two young daughters move out of Amsterdam for a more rural lifestyle in an upmarket village. Karen works as a freelance graphic designer from home while the girls are at school, soon becoming restless and lonely as Michel works very long hours as a film producer and their city friends gradually fade out of their lives. She finds it hard to make friends with the other mothers at the school gate, but eventually succeeds in her "girlfriend offensive" and becomes close to the well-off but hard-drinking Hanneke. Soon, Karen, Hanneke and two other mothers whose children are at the same school become part of a "dinner club" in which they socialise once a week while their husbands look after their children. And boy, do they drink! Karen is the only one of the women who has a regular source of income; the other wives are supported by their successful husbands and can pursue a life of tennis, shopping and other pleasures of the rich and idle.Naturally, all is not what it seems, and as the book opens, one of the fathers of this social group dies in a fire at his home. Karen reflects on the initial friendship of the families and their gradual disintegration as alcohol removes judgement and restraint, as previously hidden tensions and hypocrisies come to the surface. Another member of the group dies by falling from a balcony window in an Amsterdam hotel. Karen is convinced that neither death is an accident, but the rest of the club pull together and ostracise her. She becomes desperate, having embarked on a hasty affair with one of the fathers in the club, Simon, who seems to have everyone in his power.Eventually, Karen joins forces with the most appealing character in the book, the idiosyncratic woman detective Dorian Jager, who is investigating the case, or trying to. Karen comes to a turning point where she has to decide what is most important - finding out what has happened to her dead friends whatever the cost to her and her own family, or whether her doubts are in her imagination and she should stay loyal to those who are left. At the same time, the author constantly shifts the reader's perception of the roles of the different members of the group, so that the eventual truth is something of a surprise.The Dinner Club is an amusing but perceptive satire of the shallow, materialistically aspirational life. It's slight, quick and easy to read, and is no work of great literature -- but it leaves a strong impression in its modern approach to the old themes of corruption and redemption. I particularly like the character of Dorian, and hope that she will be reprised in a future novel. She has some echoes of Ann Cleeves's Vera Stanhope, but is a truly eccentric maverick in her own right.

I had been meaning to buy this novel for ages; to be honest, I was hoping the price would come down as I thought £8.99 was a bit steep - and after reading it, I thought it was definitely over-priced! Having said that, it was an enjoyable read.I would describe it as a "chick-lit thriller" as I don't really think it would appeal to most men or avid fans of real crime fiction. It is basically Karen's story, the main character and narrator, a "yuppy" mother of two who has recently moved with her family from Amsterdam to a village in the Dutch countryside seeking a better quality of life. After the initial loneliness, Karen and her family make friends with four like-minded couples and their families - The Dinner Club. Underneath this friendship there are undercurrents of jealousy, lust and dislike for each other culminating in the murder of one of them. Very little is given over to the police investigation and procedures, it is mainly Karen's take on the investigation. By the time the murderer is named and shamed, the friends have all fallen out.My main disappointment was that there was nothing particularly Dutch about the story except a couple of references to Karen jumping on or off her bicycle! - it could have been set anywhere.Certainly not in the same class as Mankell, Indridasson or Larsson, but an easy read suited to a Friday night in after a busy week at work.