Nicolas Freeling Biography

British crime writer, born in London, educated at the University of Dublin. He worked as a cook in European hotels and restaurants from 1945 to 1960, and in 1962 published Love in Amsterdam (US title Murder in Amsterdam), the first of a series of crime novels—others include The King of the Rainy Country (1966) and Strike Out where Not Applicable (1967)—in which the detective is the Dutch policeman Van der Valk. Since Van der Valk's death in A Long Silence (1972; US title Auprès de ma Blonde) Freeling has moved the setting of his novels to provincial France, employing Henri Castang, also a policeman, as their hero (Wolfnight, 1982; You Who Know, 1994). Both characters obviously owe something in their conception to Georges Simenon's Maigret.