About Time I Read It: The Fourth Figure by Pieter Aspe

I’ve read just two novels set in Belgium. There’s Tracy Chevalier’s The Lady and the Unicorn, set in both Brussels and Paris in the late 15th century and the other being Jonathan Coe’s Expo 58, also set in Brussels but during the 1958 World’s Fair. My search on Overdrive for something set in Belgium I could apply towards Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge brought me to Pieter Aspe’s crime novel The Fourth Figure. Having good luck of late with this genre, and seeing it was nominated for the impressive-sounding Hercule Poirot Award, I decided to download a borrowable copy to my Kindle. I took a liking to The Fourth Figure after only a few pages, and like many an entertaining novel found it damn near impossible to put down. And since it’s book four of a series, all staring Bruges police Commissioner Pieter Van In, hopefully in the near future you’ll see the other three novels discussed on my blog.

When a young woman’s body is discovered in a canal outside her apartment Commissioner Van In and his partner Guido first assume it’s a suicide. But after learning she was murdered and had ties to a local satanic cult the two detectives are forced to turn Bruges upside down in search of answers. Just to make things even more complicated, Van In is forced by his superior to let a stunningly attractive journalist tag along, which in turn makes his District Attorney pregnant wife jealous.

The Fourth Figure has all the things you’d want in a European crime novel: picturesque setting, powerful individuals with dark secrets, interagency rivalries and turf wars, plot twists and a world-weary but yet unbroken talented lead investigator. Expertly translated from Flemish, The Fourth Figure reads wonderfully. Like I said at the start, you’ll be seeing more from this series on my blog.