You can read this article about Naming the Dead in the January 2026 issue of Crime Writers Association Readers News CWA Readers News Jan 2026
Naming the Dead by Karen Haden
Amsterdam provides an exciting setting for a murder investigation
Physician
Alexander Baxby seeks a new start in 1608 Amsterdam, but his past comes back to
haunt him when the body of a young Englishman is found beneath the city’s Blue
Bridge. His friends think the death was an accident, canal pavements being
notoriously slippery when wet. Dutch neighbours assume the victim was using the
stilletjes (urinals) beneath
the arches for illicit purposes. Baxby suspects an agent of Richard Bancroft,
the tenacious Archbishop of Canterbury, has crossed the Narrow Sea from England
to murder exiles in Amsterdam. He conducts an impromptu autopsy in a canal
house loft to determine the true cause of death.
The Blue Bridge
is an intriguing murder site. It links the walled city to reclaimed islands
where immigrants live. Unusually for an Englishman, the victim had a lucrative
job at the Weighing House in Dam Square, the centre of Amsterdam’s trade. Perhaps
a Dutch burgher or guildsmen killed him, envious of his wealth. When a second
body is found at the same spot, Baxby fears who will be next.
Amsterdam is not
as safe as the physician expected. Life is more challenging too. His patients include
traumatised mercenaries, Huguenots, Anabaptists, and Sephardic Jews and Muslims
who have fled forced conversion by the Inquisition in Spain. All are nervous
about the implications of a possible Truce between the Dutch Republic and its
former Habsburg rulers. With everyone relying on pamphlets for news, Baxby is
incensed when the names of the English victims appear on some, posthumously
accrediting them with Spanish sympathies.
Baxby’s dreams
of marrying and buying his own canal house prove hard to realise. He fears his
former spymaster Geoffrey is trying to track him down, but he does not relent
nor forget those who have died. Only when his own life is threatened, does he
begin to uncover lies, misinformation and malevolence on a scale he never imagined.
His life hangs by a thread, but he does not give up. Eventually, with the help
of his friends, the physician uncovers disturbing truths about the Amsterdam murders
and wider political rivalry in the Dutch Republic.
In the next Alexander
Baxby novel, due for publication in 2026, the murder-investigating physician will
return to England in very different circumstances to those in which he left.
Karen Haden