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This was the end of the story that had started 'Once upon a time, in a rainy country, there was a king...' The end had not happened in a rainy country, but on a bone-dry Spanish hillside, three hundred metres from where Van der Valk had left a lot of blood, some splintered bone, a few fragments of gut, and a ten-seventy-five Mauser rifle bullet.

No one had broken any laws. But a handsome, middle-aged millionaire had disappeared with a naked girl. And Van der Valk was given the job of finding out why.

'Two women had committed suicide, and a third had had to be led gently away by men in white coats. There had been an outbreak of anonymous letters. . .That was not so very much. But there was something more, intangible but perceptible.'

And Inspector Van der Valk changes his mind about the routine nature of his mission to Drente. What lies behind the small-town immoralities, eaves-dropping, hysteria? Could he by chance have stumbled upon one of the century's most wanted criminals?

First published in 1972, the tale is of an unimportant case. No crime had been committed. For Van der Valk the shady dealings of a prosperous Amsterdam jeweler were more of a private puzzle.

Two bullets put paid to that incurable curiosity.

Van der Valk is on the case again as a mysterious letter is unearthed alluding to the murder of a man named Cabestan. In the letter, the murderer is named but van der Valk must find out first who this mysterious letter-writer is. What transpires is a tale of deception and adultery as the rich Carl Merckel, the managing director of the Lutz Brothers merchant bank, lays an accusation of cold blooded homicide of which, he claims, his wife had no part to play.

A true master of popular crime fiction and creator of the ever-popular Inspector van der Valk and Henri Castang, Nicolas Freeling...