Nicolas Freeling: Castang's City

Nicolas Freeling: Castang's City (USA 2024)

From the Publisher:
A French detective looks into a public figure's murder-and discovers some private secrets-in a mystery by an author who is "a joy to read" (The Times Literary Supplement).

When a local official is gunned down in the street, it looks like a cold-blooded political assassination. But as Inspector Henri Castang investigates-and questions the victim's colleagues and family-it seems the motive might have been closer to home.

The mystery only becomes more tangled when the official's son turns up dead. What is this family involved in that has cost them two lives already? Castang must sort through secrets, blackmail, and lies to solve the case before another victim is targeted...

Castang's City is an atmospheric and suspenseful novel by a celebrated author who earned crime fiction's three most prestigious prizes: the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, the Edgar Award, and the CWA Gold Dagger.

Nicolas Freeling: Castang's City. A Henri Castang Mystery. Early Bird Books / Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781504092234 (August, 2024), 268 p., $23.99.

Nicolas Freeling: Castang's City (USA 2023)

From the Publisher:
A French detective looks into a public figure's murder-and discovers some private secrets-in a mystery by an author who is "a joy to read" (The Times Literary Supplement).

Nicolas Freeling: Castang's City. A Henri Castang Mystery. Early Bird Books / Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781504088183 (May, 2023), eBook, 1517 KB (ca. 290 p.), $14.99.

Nicolas Freeling: Castang's City (UK 2001)

From the Publisher:
An intriguing case presents itself to Castang where assassination and terrorism are the order of the day. A deputy mayor is murdered and his family, friends and colleagues are all suspects. In this pulsing mystery, Freeling lets loose a quirky, inventive crime fiction that should taunt and tease.

Nicolas Freeling: Castang's City. A Henri Castang Mystery. House of Stratus, ISBN: 1842328557 (April, 2001), 268 p., £6.99.

Nicolas Freeling: Castang's City (USA 1981)

From the Publisher:
The deputy mayor of Inspector Castang's city is gunned down in broad daylight in his white Porsche, and the police suspect a terrorist attack. But when Castang begins to question the dead man's family, and there is one death and one near-death, he begins to change his mind. Meanwhile his wife, Vera, a crippled Czech gymnast, is giving birth to the Castangs' first child.

"With each new book, Castang is growing in character. So are his wife Vera and the supporting cast of Castang's colleagues." -- Washington Post

"Freeling writes not so much to make us guess who done it but why it was done. Crime is an excuse to examine the human character. He is interested in both the victim and the criminal -- and in the people around them. And he's a brilliant portraitist." -- Hubert Saal, Newsweek

Nicolas Freeling: Castang's City. A Henri Castang Suspense Novel. Vintage Books, ISBN: 039474747X (December, 1981), 310 p., $2.95 (?).

Nicolas Freeling: Castang's City (USA 1980)

From the Publisher:
Nicolas Freeling has now divided his suspense novels into two major series. One features the widow of Inspector van der Valk, who was introduced in the novel called The Widow in 1979; the other features Henri Castang, the French police inspector who lives and works in one of the major provincial cities. Castang's City, the most recent book in that series, has in fact two protagonists: Castang and his city. Freeling stresses that he is not writing about Strasbourg, where he himself lives, nor Toulouse, nor any other specific place, but about a town that he has invented and that each of his books makes more real.

Castang's City starts with a sudden and unexpected assassination, a fusillade of shots tearing into a flashy Porsche in the middle of town, an unexpected kind of killing for this part of the world. Admirers of Freeling's work will know that this is but the introduction to a far more complex story. As it develops, we find ourselves entering the different worlds of Castang's city. But equally important, and perhaps even more pleasing, we begin to know Castang's own life better than ever before, as his relationship with his wife, Vera, unfolds and as the two of them come marvelously alive.

Castang's City will remind readers why Freeling is so often compared to Simenon for his ability to evoke both the places and the human relationships about which his thrillers revolve

Jacket photograph by William Douglas King
Jacket lettering by Craig DeCamps

Nicolas Freeling: Castang's City. A Novel. Pantheon Books, ISBN: 0394508955 (September, 1980), 245 p., $9.95.

Nicolas Freeling: Castang's City (UK 1980)

From the Publisher:
Assassinations are never pretty affairs, and Etienne Marcel's is no exception. As thunderous clouds gather blackly overhead, Henri Castang is faced with his fifth, intriguing case. Are terrorists responsible for this outrage, or are there more sinister implications behind the deputy mayor's murder? Guided by Commissaire Richard, Castang and his colleagues observe Marcel's family, friends and business acquaintances, in an attempt to establish patterns of behaviour. The conclusions reached at the end are tinged with the quirkiness we have come to love and expect from Nicolas Freeling's writing.

Castang's is no celestial city, but neither is it one of eternal night. It is real, pulsating, sometimes frightening, peopled by the richly varied characters from the vivid imagination of a most original writer.

Nicolas Freeling: Castang's City. A Novel. London: William Heinemann, 1980, ISBN: 0434271853, 245 p., £5.95.