Talk:Nicolas Freeling

Questioning story of jail term
Nicolas Freeling and I were friends from the mid-1970s until the end of his life; indeed, I am the physicist who advised him on the 1977 novel Gadget.

Shortly after the publication of A Long Silence/Aupres de ma Blonde I asked him whether any of the seemingly autobiographical parts of the novel had any basis in fact. I still have a signed letter from Nicolas stating that all of the "VdV stuff," in the book, from beginning to end, was fiction. And yet it is true that later in Freeling's life the story of a short jail term triggering the writing of Love in Amsterdam became accepted. I never raised the question of the inconsistency, either with Nicolas or with his wife Renee, again. Can anybody supply any evidence that sheds life on the question?

Peter.zimmerman (talk) 19:09, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

For the record: The obituaries give variant versions of this episode:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/23/books/nicolas-freeling-76-dies-set-novels-in-modern-europe.html:

"He was the chef at an Amsterdam hotel when the police, investigating an underworld ring, took him in for questioning and inadvertently inspired his writing career.

A foreigner in police custody, he was fascinated by the interrogation and began to weave it into what became the first story about Van der Valk, the worldly wise detective intrigued by the why's as much as by the whodunits."

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/jul/22/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries:

"On one occasion, while working as the senior chef in an Amsterdam hotel, he was arrested and locked up on suspicion of involvement, as a foreigner, in the city's thriving underworld. Intrigued by the worldly-wise detective who interrogated him, he smoothed out sheets of paper salvaged from his prison job of wrapping soap, and started to write a story featuring such an operator.

Eventually, he was deported, along with his Dutch wife Renee."

153.110.203.232 (talk) 08:50, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Refusal to revive Van Der Valk…?
The article mentions that Freeling killed off VdV in 1972, and that, after that, “He refused to bring the detective back to life and wrote two novels where his widow Arlette was the detective”; but the bibliography lists Sand Castles (1989), as a VdV novel. If it was a revival, it contradicts without explanation the assertion that he refused to do such, and perhaps should read, “refused, until…”; if it was a previously written, but unpublished, work from earlier in his career, it might not contradict, but probably would benefit from a mention. Or, is it a third option - a book set in the VdV world, but with no VdV, or continuing on from his Arlette books…? Jock123 (talk) 09:11, 6 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Good catch -- I researched this and changed it. Softlavender (talk) 20:15, 2 April 2023 (UTC)