NICHOLAS FREELING – Lady Macbeth. Henri Castang #10. Andre Deutsch Ltd, UK, hardcover, 1988. No US edition.

   Look – a criminal case history, call it a dossier if you like, starts mostly with statements made by the police. Made to the police, in the first place, by the people concerned. We type them out in résumé form. Chap signs at the bottom, agreeing that this is a true and faithful account of what he had to say. Can’t put it down word by word, question and answer. Much too long; not to say incoherent, irrelevant. People ramble, full of ums and ers. Probably all lies anyhow. They change their stories, you know, to suit the facts as these appear.

   I’ll be honest, I am now, and have been since his first book, a Nicholas Freeling fan. I devoured the Van der Valk novels, one of my favorite modern mystery novels is King of the Rainy Country, mourned when he killed off Van der Valk, took solace in the two books about Arlette, Van der Valk’s French widow, and was doubtful when he returned with French cop Henri Castang (“A cop, you know, shouldn’t allow himself to think much.”) of the national Police Judiciaire.

   After all, Castang’s artist wife Vera was a Czech, just as Dutch Van der Valk’s wife had been a fish out of water Frenchwoman in the Netherlands. Castang was another good cop of a certain age, and perhaps only the presence of his mentor Richards really differentiated that much from Van der Valk. Why had he bothered to kill off Van der Valk for a slightly younger clone?

   It took about three books before I began to see why. Castang freed Freeling in the same ways Van der Valk had begun to limit him. Even late in the series, with Europe changing and Castang and the PJ now part of the European Union it was obvious he was a better and deeper character, if he never quite got the credit for it.

   Lady MacBeth not only gives us another fine mystery, it also gives us Castang as part time narrator of the novel, not just the focal point, a welcome chance to hear his voice directly for long time fans. And it adds a bonus.

   The plot begins with the most ordinary of events. Friends of Castang ask his help when the female member of a seemingly perfect couple goes missing, and the friends in question are Arthur and Arlette Davidson (He’s nice; like his wife; I like them both. They’re both a pest. She, particularly.), yes, that Arlette, whose taste for solving mysteries hasn’t faded. She and Arthur are among the other narrators.

   Castang sort of meets Van der Valk. (*)

   Forgive a brief geek out.

   Back to our story, Guy and Sibillle are neighbors and friends of the Davidsons. They seemed a perfect couple, he extremely nice, she strong and smart (Sibille was a fiercely proud woman. Also ambitious, tenacious, hard if you like and self-willed.). On vacation to the Voges, a mountainous district where the impoverished castle Sibille grew up in was, the two argued and Sibillle, according to Guy, demanded he stop, got out of the car, walked into the trees, and has not been seen since. He returned home expecting her return. Time has passed and she has not shown up. Arlette suspects murder.

   Castang, now Commissaire Castang, suspects a domestic quarrel and a stubborn wife, but agrees to pacify Arthur and Arlette (Arthur is certainly meant to be Freeling himself) by making a few inquiries. After all it could be murder.

   Or something much much worse.

   Mysteries often begin with small seemingly unimportant matters. Not with murders of great import, but some small matter like an unresolved quarrel and haughty wife who may just have walked out despite of all the outward appearances. Castang, Arlette, neither of them can imagine where this simple domestic drama is going to lead.

   Granted Freeling does not write direct simple to the point prose. He ambles around the point a bit, takes seemingly unrelated tangents, indulges in stream of consciousness styling here and there, notes small details of life, and somehow manages to make all that painfully suspenseful always steering you back on course to revelations you never expected, to violence that comes from human frailty, but is no less shocking for it when it involves someone caught up in what one Freeling character calls “awful moral righteousness.”

      Subtly, and with great skill as a writer, and as a master at misdirection, he carries you along in the narrative to the shocking ending, to something much more than domestic violence, and much darker and closer to today’s headlines, always in the capable human and humanistic hands of the likes of Castang and Arlette, not triumphant in unraveling the mystery, merely lost in the complexity of human needs.

   There is the tragedy. Strength and weakness hand in hand. What matter whether the kingdom be the size of Scotland, or that over-tidy four-room apartment…What matter gun, knife, or bomb? It’s a carnivorous world. We devour one another. Hate is love.


(*)   Van der Valk and Patricia Moyes’ Henry and Emily Tibbet exchanged crossovers back in their series.