Nicolas Freeling: One More River (USA 2023)

From the Publisher:
From an Edgar award-winning author, a crime novel about an English ex-pat on the run from danger is "a wondrous, strange trip through a very fine mind" (The New York Times).

From the critically acclaimed author of the Van der Valk and the Henri Castang mystery series comes a stand-alone crime novel about a man startled out of his placid life in the South of France by a violent attempt on his life.

An aging British crime writer living out his golden years in the south of France, John Charles is reaping the benefits of his successful career. But the moment a single gunshot shocks him out of this quiet existence, his life is forever altered. Fleeing his attackers, Charles finds adventure and excitement as he travels through Europe, staying one step ahead as he tries to uncover the identity of his pursuers. His journey becomes one of self-discovery, until the moment he falls into the hands of his enemies...

Nicolas Freeling: One More River. Early Bird Books / Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781504090285 (December, 2023), eBook, 4114 KB (ca. 262 p.), $14.99.

Nicolas Freeling: One More River (UK 1999)

From the Publisher:
John Charles is a seventy-year-old English writer living in France. He has three grown-up children, with whom he gets on perfectly well, and an ex-wife, Sibilla, who left him some years ago. As a writer he has a reputation, and by wise investment has made himself comfortably off, if not wealthy; there remains his house, which is comfortable, and his garden, which he tends and of which he is very fond. He is strolling in it one afternoon when someone takes a pot shot at him, but misses. The would-be assassin does not return, but John cannot let the incident rest. He makes himself very visible, keen to draw the gunman out, and while he does so, travelling through Europe, he draws out his own past, peeling back layer upon layer of self-deceit and self-deception. Constructed with labyrinthine skill, full of allusion and illusion, this is a subtle, deeply-layered `mystery' from acknowledged king of the European crime novel.

Nicolas Freeling: One More River. Little, Brown, ISBN: 0751520128 (January, 1999), 212 p., £5.99.

Nicolas Freeling: One More River (USA 1998)

From the Publisher:
In the realm of international mystery fiction, Nicolas Freeling is without peer. His series of "romans policiers" featuring Dutch detective Van der Valk, followed by his Inspector Henri Castang novels, wove detection with politics, pursuit with history. Now Freeling breaks new ground in his three-and-a-half-decades-long career. His new novel is the haunting chronicle of a bizarre crime against a refined English writer whose deepest secrets are the ones he keeps from himself...

ONE MORE RIVER
It began on a warm autumn night in the French villa where John Charles, an author of "acknowledged distinction," lives a life of comfort and reflection. Suddenly the sound of a gunshot rends the thick air, and a bullet barely misses him. Soon John's house has been burned to the ground, and another man, dressed almost identically to John, is shot.

Why does someone want to kill John Charles? Leaving behind the French countryside, the man of thought and erudition, a man who indulges his body's desires and his mind's flights of fancy, sets off across Europe's postmodern landscape, reexamining his past, his marriage, and the relationships he has scattered across the continent. But John cannot guess that he is running straight into a trap. When his shadowy enemies take him captive, the pieces will begin to come together.

Held prisoner by three people who were much closer to him than he knew, he is forced to look back: at a young English soldier and an innocent German girl running naked through the moonlight... at a lifetime of partings and reunions... at a world ripped apart by war and violently pulled together again.

NICOLAS FREELING was born in London in 1927. After serving in the military and working as a hotel and restaurant cook throughout Europe, Mr. Freeling began his first novel, Love in Amsterdam, while serving a sentence of three weeks in jail for stealing food. Mr. Freeling's novel King of the Rainy Country received the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Among his other literary awards are the Gold Dagger from the British Crime Writers Association, and France's Grand Prix de Roman Policier. Mr. Freeling lives near Strasbourg, France.

Jacket design and illustration by Vince McIndoe

Nicolas Freeling: One More River. The Mysterious Press published by Warner Books, ISBN: 0892966165 (March, 1998), 212 p., $22.00.