A Van der Valk Thriller - On a parched Spanish hillside, Van der Valk spills blood and splinters bone. A handsome millionaire is missing. A naked girl has disappeared with him. Van der Valk has the arduous task of finding out why and where they are. And some people would shoot him for trying.
"I was sure she was telling the truth."For once I am enjoying an opportunity to poke fun at one of my most favorite author's work. The silly sentence quoted above comes from Nicolas Freeling's "Double-Barrel" (1964), the fourth entry in the celebrated Van der Valk series, commonly regarded as one...
Van der Valk never disappoints and Freeling has an incredible gift for dialogue, audible and interior. This book is written from Van der Valk's point of view and then from that of Dr. Van der Post, the "criminal," who under his carefully massaged facade turns out to be Van der Valk's "semblable ...
When Esther Marx is found savagely murdered, mown down by machine-gun fire in her lacklustre apartment, the trail leads to the wide, shallow valley of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, 1954. In this remarkable tale entwined with past and present, Freeling brings to life a classic story of murder and intr...
A Van der Valk Thriller - How do you prove a murder that's almost impossible to prove was a murder? An elusive homicide evades even the most decisive guile from a true master of criminal investigation, but Van der Valk won't let that stop him. A seemingly unintended death of a local restaurant ow...
'William doesn't lurk and neither does he stalk; it gets noticed. Incompetent and illegal, and he has no intention of disturbing Doctor Holier-than-Thou - or not for the moment; that's the fellow who would be quick to make a complaint and he's no longer a serving cop: status dodgy. He'll pounce t...
No Germans. They had gone home, or they had gone into the town for a massive pot of sauerkraut, which is the Strasbourg cure to most ailments, and nearly all frustrations. She had almost no distance to go. Two minutes’ walk, to the corner of the Boulevard de la Victoire. The University is all aro...
Plenty of local people given to his kind of checked shirt; as for the loden coat, it was as correct as in Kitzbühel. There was a fine drizzle, and no sun, but there, he hadn’t expected everyone to be out picking grapes. It was still warm for October, with milky, heavy clouds. ‘Very close, today,’...
It had two unobtrusive buckles and added little to a waistline that hadn’t been exactly famous to begin with. Since she inclined to be heavy farther down – euphemism for a broad behind – it stayed reasonably in proportion. The holster was a much more tiresome business. Stiffer, heavier, a piece o...
The little ends of thread leading nowhere that govern our lives can suddenly plait themselves together into a cord strong enough to hang a dog by. Dick wanted to eat his sandwich. He hadn’t really wanted the sandwich, and certainly not in that smelly snackbar, but he had some kind of nervous hung...