De Witte Godin

Franka #20

by Henk Kuijpers

Genres: Comics, Fiction, Crime

52 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2009

About the author

Henk Kuijpers (born 10 December 1946), a comics artist from Haarlem, the Netherlands who is most famous for his Franka series, featuring a strong model-like female sleuth solving mysteries, often in exotic locales.
- Wikipedia

Reviews

[Gijs Grob · Rating 4 out of 5]

'De witte godin', deel twee van de Franka-trilogie 'De reis van de Ishtar', is in bepaalde opzichten Kuijpers' meest ambiteuze Franka-album. In dit verhaal geeft hij zijn heldin een zus, een moeder en een ouderlijk huis. Helaas mislukt zijn poging om Franka daarmee een extra dimsensie te geven. Gelukkig is 'De witte godin' ook gewoon een pakkend verhaal dat de spanning er goed in houdt, vooral omdat het duidelijk de focus houdt op Franka's zoektocht en de plannen van de superschurk tot aan het einde onduidelijk blijven.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

2nd volume in an epic 3-part storyline in Henk Kuijpers' comic book series "Franka", which since the late 1970's has followed the exploits of a hard-as-nails woman private detective. This one came out in 2009, and one cannot accuse Kuijpers of getting lazy in old age as it's perhaps the most ambitious storyline in Franka's history.

The previous volume Het zwaard van Iskander ("The Sword of Iskander") saw Franka being sent to Turkey to find the long-lost sword of Alexander the Great (Iskander being the Turkish-language form of Alexander), only to end up tracked by other private detectives and finding her longtime boyfriend (a reformed gentleman master thief) murdered by an unseen assailant shortly after she located the sword. Investigating all this leads Franka to revisit her family history (something that's only been fleetingly hinted at in previous volumes), and enquire her long-time fashion designer friend Laura Lava (a recurring character in the series) whose fiancée, a Russian businessman named Alexander Carat, wants the sword of his famous namesake for his private collection, about what's really going on. (the titular "White Goddess" is Laura's new luxury yacht Ishtar) In the process Franka finds out just how many enemies Alexander Carat made back in Russia, both among the authorities and in the business world... as well as what role that popular 1920's/1930's era crime novelist Agatha Christie played in the Sword of Alexander getting discovered and lost again. (as shown in a historical flashback allowing Henk Kuijpers to depict that era in his usual meticulously researched depth with an almost superhuman attention to detail)

Here is where the Ishtar Trilogy, as Kuijpers calls it, starts really moving into gear and becoming the type of action-packed globetrotting sexy crime thriller with a gloriously convoluted plot that Kuijpers has excelled at since the mid-1980's (the earliest "Franka" volumes were more of a feminine counterpart to Tintin or Spirou) except on a larger scale and with higher stakes than ever before. In particular I enjoy the depiction of Jamaica, where Franka foils an assassination attempt by a corrupt forensic pathologist named Carmen Corazon who is immediately overwhelmed by regret and becomes the key to solving the case. If there's any drawback it's just that its only difference from previous Franka volumes is that there's more of anything, and the story is so reliant on call-backs to them that I would not recommend that new readers start with the Ishtar Trilogy. However if you like this type of crime thriller in the comic book format you're bound to enjoy this.