Edgar Award Best Novel Winner
King of the Rainy Country
by Nicolas Freeling
Summary
Dutch detective Van der Valk follows the trail of a wealthy man who has vanished, a search that carries him across Europe and into questions of obsession and identity. Nicolas Freeling writes a literary, reflective brand of police procedural in which Van der Valk thinks as much about people and motive as about clues. The book is among the strongest entries in a series that brought a continental sensibility to English language crime fiction.
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Historical Context & Significance
The title comes from a line by the poet Charles Baudelaire, and Freeling's Van der Valk later became a popular British television series.