Koch Grows as a Novelist, but Loses Impact 
 Herman Koch's three novels have gradually been getting more complex, but they all revolve around similar themes. I am not sure whether the greater complexity speaks to an increased maturity and assurance on the part of the author, or merely dilutes the power of his raw ideas. Personally, I felt there were far too many things going on in this latest of his books, to the detriment of its effectiveness overall. But this is still the same Herman Koch; those who like him for his willingness to defy conventional politeness will not be disappointed: 
 In her opinion, it was the women whose shelf life had expired long ago who sported the deepest decolletes. The same went for women who were to fat, for women who smoked, for the redheads. The women with faces on which two packs of Gauloises and two bottles of red wine a day for twenty years had left their mark. Pits and craters and stretches of dead skin--a face like a polluted river in which the last fish had bobbed to the surface years ago. [tr. Sam Garrett]Both 
 The Dinner 
 and 
 Summer House with Swimming Pool 
 had featured fat cats (a politician, an actor, a surgeon) who, in the course of the novel, will get their come-uppance. In Dear Mr. M, the M of the title is a famous novelist, rather past his prime. The novel begins as a letter to him from his downstairs neighbor who does not hide his opinion that the great man has feet of clay and the breath of a compost pile. When he starts stalking not only the author but also his much younger wife, things become sinister in the best Koch fashion--especially when it is hinted that he may have been involved in a murder that took place forty years before, which M used as the subject for his most successful novel, Payback. So far, I was absolutely in five-star territory. 
 But then the viewpoint changes to the author's perspective. And--surprise--he emerges a lot more sympathetic, although the texture of his life is a lot duller, as he moves from cafe to book-signing to home again. The change in tone showed Koch as less of a shock-meister and more of a straight novelist; I wasn't sure whether to applaud or regret the loss in tension. 
 But as the book went on, and the narrative pull became weaker and weaker, I found I could no longer sustain a five- or even four-star rating. The case that M had fictionalized in Payback was that of the disappearance of a high school teacher, who had had an affair with one of his students, then stalked her when she took up with a new boyfriend. Already in The Dinner, Koch had introduced the idea that even nice children from good families could turn out to be monsters, and Summer House With Swimming Pool also includes an older man preying on underage girls. But too much of this section of the novel is about the more or less normal lives of the kids, the shifting allegiances within their group, and so on; the various elements of weirdness, such as the bizarre movies made by one of their number, are not enough to sustain the atmosphere with which the book began. Though I did like the evocation of the physical atmosphere of Zeeland-Flanders, especially when I looked up a map and some online photos. 
 Near Retranchement, Zeeland-Flanders 
 Het Zwin, bird sanctuary 
 When we return to the life of Mr. M once more, the subject matter becomes the rivalries between writers and the dirty laundry of the publishing world--which is just about the least interesting thing that an author could write about. In the last few dozen pages, however, Koch does pull it all together in much the clever way that Ian McEwan might, with a twist that gives new meaning to the title. It was enough for a fourth star on Amazon, but not, I'm afraid, on Goodreads.