Nicolas Freeling: Love in Amsterdam (USA 2020)

From the Publisher:
MEET VAN DER VALK, AMSTERDAM'S BEST DETECTIVE.
A woman, Elsa, is brutally murdered in her Amsterdam apartment. Her ex-lover, Martin, is seen outside the building around the time of the crime. The witness who saw him? A policeman.

It looks like a straightforward case -- but police inspector Van der Valk is not convinced. Despite all the evidence -- and the fact that Martin originally denied he was at the apartment -- he believes Martin is not guilty of murder. Instead of charging him, Van der Valk takes him on a tour: a tour of the investigation, a tour of Martin's own past and a tour into the darkly obsessive world of Elsa...

"Elegant style and continually interesting narrative which give his novels their special flavor." -- P.D. JAMES
"The air of civilized urbanity that runs through Freeling's books is to most detective novels what Henry James is to Zane Grey." -- NEW YORK TIMES
"[Freeling] has given the detective story new dimensions much as John le Carré has done for the spy novel." -- NEWSWEEK

NICOLAS FREELING (1927-2003) was a British crime novelist, best known as the author of the Van der Valk series of detective novels. His novel The King of the Rainy Country received the 1967 Edgar Award, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Novel. He also won the Gold Dagger of the Crime Writers' Association and France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. In 1968, Love in Amsterdam was adapted as the film Amsterdam Affair, directed by Gerry O'Hara and starring Wolfgang Kieling as Van der Valk.

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Cover Design: Sean Kapitain

Nicolas Freeling: Love in Amsterdam. A Novel. Hanover Square Press, ISBN: 9781335284815 (November, 2020), 224 p., $17.99, eBook $8.99.

Nicolas Freeling: Love in Amsterdam (UK 2020)

From the Publisher:
The first novel in the acclaimed VAN DER VALK series - now a major new ITV series starring Marc Warren
'Masterful' SUNDAY TIMES
'Freeling's Inspector Van der Valk is less rugged than Rebus, less parsonical than Dalgliesh, more Morse than Frost, and more Maigret than any of them. Marvellous' - Anita Brookner

'Freeling is a joy to read' TLS
'You're in for a treat' COSMOPOLITAN
A woman, Elsa, is brutally murdered in her Amsterdam apartment. Her ex-lover, Martin, is seen outside the building around the time of the crime. The witness who saw him? A policeman.

It looks like a straightforward case - but police inspector Van der Valk is not convinced. Despite all the evidence - and the fact that Martin originally denied he was at the apartment - he believes Martin is not guilty of murder. Instead of charging him, Van der Valk takes him on a tour: a tour of the investigation; a tour of Martin's own past; and a tour into the darkly obsessive world of Elsa...

Nicolas Freeling: Love in Amsterdam. Van der Valk Novel 1. The Murder Room / Orion Books, ISBN: 9781471920608 (April, 2020), 320 p., £8.99, eBook £4.99.

Nicolas Freeling: Love in Amsterdam (UK 2001)

From the Publisher:
Elsa de Charmoy is found shot with a Mauser 765; a gun bought by her lover Martin who swears he hasn't seen her for five years. But Inspector Van der Valk, the unorthodox hero of Freeling's crime blockbusters, has misgivings and applies a subtle, insidious pressure in a masterly performance of police interrogation. Martin is driven to examine his past culminating in an edgy and ultra-hypnotic reprise for Van der Valk amidst the streets and cafes of Amsterdam.

Nicolas Freeling: Love in Amsterdam. A Van der Valk Thriller. House of Stratus, ISBN: 1842328395 (June, 2001), 196 p., £6.99.

Nicolas Freeling: Death in Amsterdam (USA 1964)

From the Publisher:
ONLY THE BEST IN MYSTERY FICTION FROM BALLANTINE BOOKS...
Here's what just some of the critics have been saying about NICOLAS FREELING:
"You may quote me as saying with delight that DEATH IN AMSTERDAM has the sinister, spellbinding perfection of a cobra uncoiling. It is a masterpiece of the genre." -- Stanley Ellin

"... altogether not to be missed." -- Julian Symons

"Rare characterization and dialogue. A connoisseur's piece." Nicholas Blake

DON'T MISS IT!

Nicolas Freeling: Death in Amsterdam. New York: Ballantine, 1964, Ballantine Books #U2130, 176 p., 50¢.

Nicolas Freeling: Love in Amsterdam (USA 1963)

From the Publisher:
Julian Symons says of this novel: "Unusual, absorbing, and altogether not to be missed."
"You may quote me as saying with delight that Love in Amsterdam has the sinister, spellbinding perfection of a cobra uncoiling. It is a masterpiece of the genre." -- Stanley Ellin

Love in Amsterdam
by Nicolas Freeling

Martin was locked in jail.
Elsa was dead. It was, in a way, a good thing, since Elsa living had been a constant menace to him. But Elsa dead had turned out to be a menace, too.

For Elsa had been killed, shot four times with a pistol Martin had given her. And Martin had been seen standing in front of her house on the evening of the murder.

It was nearly midnight and Martin was at home drinking coffee with his wife, Sophia, when the police came for him. They wouldn't tell him why they were taking him to headquarters. He didn't find out until he got there and Inspector Van der Valk told him.

Poor Sophia, Martin thought, locked in his cell. But when Sophia came to visit him, bringing him smoked eel, cigars, a bar of chocolate and a history book, her first question to him was, "Did you kill her?"

The streets of Amsterdam, the canals and cafés -- and police headquarters, and especially Inspector Van der Valk -- will become immediate and real for the reader as he follows the tense battle between prisoner and policeman in a remarkable first novel by a gifted new writer.

"Rare characterization and dialogue. A connoisseur's piece." -- Nicholas Blake

Jacket design by Jack Reich

Nicolas Freeling: Love in Amsterdam. A Harper Novel of Suspense. New York: Harper & Row, 1963, 180 p., $3.50.