Crime in May (1946) by Marten van Alland

Back in July, I reviewed a long out-of-print, practically forgotten Dutch mystery novel, De dood kwam door de sneeuw (Death Came Through the Snow, 1957) by Frits de Winter, but, as some of you know by now, the quality of Dutch detective fiction is all over the place – nearly impossible to gauge quality beforehand. That's because not much has been written about them for decades or even reviewed. It doesn't help that nothing ever gets reprinted in this country.I likened trying to track down genuinely good, classically-styled Dutch mystery novels to trying to find your way through a maze blindfolded or playing Marco Polo by yourself. De Winter's Death Came Through the Snow was one of those blind picks based on nothing more than the attractive cover art suggesting a John Dickson Carr-like mystery, which wasn't anywhere near to what it turned out to be. The first-half suggested some influence from early period Ellery Queen, but collapsed during the second-half into an utter mess. Sometimes…