Janwillem van de Wetering (1931–2008) was born and raised in Rotterdam, but lived most recently in Surry, Maine. He served as a member of the Amsterdam Special Constabulary and was once a Zen Buddhist monk. He is renowned for his detective fiction, including Outsider in Amsterdam, Death of a Hawker, The Japanese Corpse, The Maine Massacre, which garnered him the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and ten other books in the Amsterdam Cops series.