Nicolas Freeling: The Seacoast of Bohemia (USA 2023)

From the Publisher:
From an Edgar award-winning crime author, a mystery featuring unorthodox detective Henri Castang as he hunts for a kidnapper in the Czech Republic.

It's every mother's nightmare-their child abducted. But for Anita Rogier, whose son has been missing for four years, a glimmer of hope shines into her dark world when she receives a call that convinces her he is alive. But with few believing her claims, she needs a detective who is able to take the leap into the unknown. She needs Henri Castang. The former French Inspector turned European Community crime expert agrees to investigate, traveling with his wife Vera across Europe on a case that will test his detective skills.

Nicolas Freeling: The Seacoast of Bohemia. A Henri Castang Mystery. Early Bird Books / Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781504090308 (December, 2023), eBook, 6448 KB (ca. 267 p.), $14.99.

Nicolas Freeling: The Seacoast of Bohemia (2001)

From the Publisher:
Anita Rogier is living a nightmare. Four years have past since her son vanished without a trace, until, that is, she receives a telephone call that convinces her he is still alive. When she contacts the police they think she's delusional but Henri Castang, an Advisor to the European Union doesn't. What he uncovers is a connection with the SS, a trail that leads to the Czech Republic, and the discovery that Anita's father, Klaas, fathered a son fifty years ago. But the mystery deepens and leads them on towards Denmark with tragic consequence.

Nicolas Freeling: The Seacoast of Bohemia. A Henri Castang Mystery. House of Stratus, ISBN: 1842328689 (June, 2001), 199 p., £6.99, $11.50.

Nicolas Freeling: The Seacoast of Bohemia (USA 1996)

From the Publisher:
There is no ocean in Bohemia, only mountains, lakes, and the shadow of a war that ripped apart a continent and changed lives forever. One such life has reached out for Henri Castang, the former French policeman turned bureaucrat. Castang has been engaged by a wealthy woman to find her young son, kidnapped four years earlier. But when he crosses into the former Czechoslovakia with his wife, Vera, he finds a connection between the boy and an ex-SS officer, as well as a crime of another sort. Now, with a final act of violence, from a land where there is no sea, Castang is cast adrift on a tide of family secrets -- including some skeletons of his own.

"Freeling's novels are among the most original, unpredictable, and enjoyable of police procedurals." -- San Diego Union-Tribune
"This enchanting meditation on a mystery is very much a winter's tale -- a pretty yarn spun by firelight, animated by the storyteller's belief in the improbable." -- Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

Nicolas Freeling wrote his first novel while serving a sentence of three weeks in jail for stealing food. He is the author of thirty-two novels, all featuring sophisticated settings and plots and an introspective, provocative view of human nature.

Cover design by Jackie Merri Meyer and Rachel McClain
Cover illustration by John Howard
Hand lettering by Carl Dellacroce

Nicolas Freeling: The Seacoast of Bohemia. A Henri Castang Mystery Novel. The Mysterious Press / Warner Books, ISBN: 0446403717 (July, 1996), 200 p., $5.99.

Nicolas Freeling: The Seacoast of Bohemia (USA 1995)

From the Publisher:
The novels of Nicolas Freeling do not just involve crime and detection, they invoke the blood of history and the flesh of a changing world. This new mystery is Freeling's most bewitching tale yet: a case that takes his hero on a journey into the violent past of World War II. It begins with Inspector Henri Castang bicycling through the auto-clogged, rain-soaked streets of Bruxelles...

THE SEACOAST OF BOHEMIA
There is no ocean in Bohemia: only mountains, lakes, and the cold ghosts of a rage that swept a land, shattered nations and lives, and left behind a landscape of guilt and denial. But for Castang, the former French policeman who now toils in the belly of European Community bureaucracy, the seacoast of Bohemia is a place where the impossible is real, where lies turn to truth, and where answers to a painful riddle will be found.

Castang and his Czech-born wife, Vera, are touched by a wealthy woman's plea. Four years before, Madame Rogier's son had been kidnapped. Now she has received a call, and knows without question that the voice on the other end of the line belongs to her son. She is certain of it, even as the police tell her it is impossible. Even as she is told there is nothing anyone can do.

Castang is willing to believe her, and to let his detective instincts take over. Discovering that the woman's father is a former SS man who fathered a child in Germany, he is sure that this liaison is tied to the boy's disappearance. Castang and Vera cross out of modern Europe and into the Old World, into the pine forests of Bohemia and the streets of Prague. By the time they have asked their questions, they are given ample and violent warning to leave.

Suddenly the case of the missing boy is leading the inspector and his wife back through Bruxelles and north to Copenhagen. Castang, a man with secrets of his own, has become the essential player in a bizarre family reunion -- one where the blood ties are tainted with memories of death.

THE SEACOAST OF BOHEMIA, which takes its title from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, is NICOLAS FREELING'S thirty-third mystery novel. Like his detective, Henri Castang, who has known various positions and homes, Freeling himself was born in England and now lives near Strasbourg, France. He once worked as a professional cook, and 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.

Jacket design by Lisa C. McGarry
Jacket illustration by John Howard

Nicolas Freeling: The Seacoast of Bohemia. A Henri Castang Mystery Novel. The Mysterious Press, ISBN: 089296555X (June, 1995), 213 p., $18.95.

Nicolas Freeling: The Seacoast of Bohemia (UK 1994)

From the Publisher:
Anita Rogier is living every mother's nightmare. Four years ago her son, then aged eight, vanished without trace - no ransom demand, no progress from the police, no contact from the missing child.

Until, that is, she receives a cruelly brief telephone call that convinces her he is still alive. The police believe she is suffering from delusions and remain sceptical at best, so in desperation she turns to Henri Castang, a former police officer now working as Advisor to the European Community.

Castang's search for a motive is fruitless until he learns of a shadow from the Rogier family's past: 'Old Klaas', Anita's father, is an ex-Waffen SS officer and conceivably the target for a long-held desire for revenge. The trail points eastwards, and so, aided by his far-sighted wife Vera, Castang heads to the Czech Republic to follow up a tenuous lead - the discovery that Klaas fathered a son while recovering from a war wound fifty years ago.

Born and educated in England, Nicolas Freeling now lives in France and writes like nobody else; much imitated but always ahead of the fashion; admired by all but there are always new surprises. 'Unique' is the word most generally used to describe his work. In a career of over thirty years he has gathered every honour and defied every convention of crime fiction.

COVER IMAGE:
SUNSET OVER A ROCKY BAY, JOHN MARTIN (1789-1854)
AGNEW & SONS, LONDON/BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY, LONDON

Nicolas Freeling: The Seacoast of Bohemia. A Henri Castang Mystery. Little, Brown, and Company, ISBN: 0316910821 (December, 1994), 213 p., £15.99.