Customer Reviews

Love in Amsterdam

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This 1962 police/mystery set in Amsterdam is the first of the Inspector Van Der Valk books by Nicolas Freeling. While the story is technically about the murder of a middle-aged femme fatale, this is really much more a book that focuses on the ups and downs of two romantic relationships with a police procedural (of sorts) imposed over them.

Up front, I have to say that I had a hard time connecting with the book. There is something off-putting about the writing style--maybe because it's a debut effort--dialogue and narrative that may be also be the result of a bungled translation. There are so many grammatical errors, strange idioms and ponderous observations that the flow of action is stopped in its tracks frequently throughout the novel.

I've read one other Freeling book ("Because of the Cats") and had the same problem with it. I can't help comparing it to a contemporary series--the terrific Grijpstra and de Gier books by Janwillem van de Wetering--which I really enjoy and which never has the same problems with characters and story flow.

This is the first book Nicolas Freeling published in 1962 (and the first book of his that I read - fifty years later, in 2011). You can tell it is not a new crime novel; for a start it is less than 200 pages, thankfully. It has aged and the language does seem a bit old-fashioned; this probably has misled the previous reviewer to think that the translation was not very good; however, I did not find any indication that the book was translated; according to wikipedia, the book was written in English.

The book is in three parts; I really enjoyed the two first parts but the third, where the solution to the mystery is presented, is very awkward and unsatisfactory. However, the two first parts were so satisfying that I would definitely recommend the book just for them. One theme of the book, the stripping away of layers of lies is fascinating; and another, the portrayal of an obsessive love affair is excellent. The language may be somewhat old-fashioned, however, the descriptions of tangled relationships and the mess people manage to get themselves involved in are as modern as any in contemporary literature.