The following is the very first that can be read in the book:

The First Attempt on

Cor’s Life

(1996)

ON MARCH 27, 1996, MY SISTER SONJA HOLLEEDER AND HER HUSBAND, Cor van Hout, picked up their son Richie from kindergarten. Cor parked his car in front of their home on Deurloostraat, and they stayed in the car, laughing with Richie, who was singing along with his favorite song, “Funiculì Funiculà” by Andrea Bocelli, in the back seat, leaning forward between his parents.

My mother just happened to be standing at their kitchen window when a man wearing a dark coat walked toward Cor’s parked car. At the same time, Sonja looked at Cor and noticed someone approaching in the background. At ?rst she thought he was going to ask for directions, but the determined look on his face made her uneasy. He approached the car on Cor’s side.

Through the window, Sonja looked straight into his face, and it’s still etched into her memory. A yellow-brown face, with lots of wrinkles.

“Cor, what does he want?” she shouted. Cor looked to the left.

Before he could answer, the man pointed a gun at Cor and started shooting. At that moment, Cor dove aside to cover.

Sonja started screaming. Richie was in the back seat of the car; had he been hit? Had Cor been hit? She opened her car door and tumbled out. To prevent herself from getting shot, she crawled on her knees to the back door, opened it, and pulled Richie out. With him in her arms, she ran inside. The door was already open as my mother had rushed out to help her.

Cor had been hit several times. He staggered out to chase the shooter, but, unhinged by his injuries, he started walking in the wrong direction. After he had made it a couple hundred yards, the neighbors helped him back to the house.

Numb and bleeding profusely, Cor just sat there in the stairwell of Number 22 until the ambulance arrived.

I won't spoil any of the book, and I have to say this is one of the best true-crime novels that I've come across in a long time. Astrid Holleender writes—or is edited by a masterful hand—like she's meant for writing.

The above is the start of the book, quite the coarse and brutish start in itself, but her description of how she grew up still haunts me.

“So, what’s going on? I can tell you’ve been crying. Has Wim been pestering you again?” I asked. “Very much so. He wants to get himself registered at my address, but I just can’t do that. This is communal housing for the elderly and children are not allowed. If I did it I could get in trouble, I may have to leave my house, and I’d be out on the street. He was outraged when I told him and went off the deep end again. He called me a worthless mother, said that I didn’t do anything for my own child. Child?! He is fifty-six years old! “I should be ashamed for not even wanting to help my own son. He kept on screaming, so loud I was scared the neighbors would hear. He’s just like his father, just like his father,” she repeated, as if she had to hear it twice to believe it.

Judas: How a Sister's Testimony Brought Down a Criminal Mastermind, page 21

When my father found work and a house near the Hoppe factory in the Jordaan, they got married and moved there. My mother was over the moon with having her own home and her position as a married woman. Soon, however, her thoughtful fiancé transformed from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde: a fickle and unpredictable tyrant, a side of him she had never seen before and which he displayed only after she’d been caught in his web and couldn’t get away. He quit cycling and started drinking heavily. He began hitting her and forced her to give up her job and all her social connections. My maternal grandmother had offended him by saying once that he “probably didn’t want any coffee.” He interpreted this as her not wanting to serve him any coffee, and my mother was no longer allowed to stay in touch with her parents; after this, my mother didn’t see my grandparents for fifteen years. My father had succeeded in completely isolating her. He imprisoned her within her marriage, and he set the rules she had to follow. From his perspective, he was “boss”: boss of her, boss of their home, boss of the street, boss at work.

Judas: How a Sister's Testimony Brought Down a Criminal Mastermind, page 24

Astrid Holleeder's description of her family being held captive by her father—and later, by the legacy he left behind—is only comparable with the violence described by Édouard Louis in his brilliant "The End Of Eddy"; it permeates everything, and Holleeder doesn't mince words, nor does she spend them frivolously.

Beauvais, France. November 13, 1985. Willem Holleeder to the left, Cor van Hout to the right. Photo: Rene Bouwman/Hollandse Hoogte

On the whole, this book deserves a lot more publicity than it has received so far, and I hope it gets translated into a lot more languages; I read it in English, and I only hope that justice gets served in this year as there's an ongoing trial where part of the Holleeder family should get their comeuppance.

Here's a spoken-word version of the introduction to this post, in English:

https://soundcloud.com/hachetteaudio/judas-by-astrid-holleeder