This book was so choppy and so full of random, thesaurus-found words like "otiose" and "adumbrations" that I found it to be unreadable and could not bring myself to finish it. I felt like I was back studying my GRE textbook. The sentence structure stayed simple and it made it impossible to get lost in the story. For example:

"He used the contours with great skill. It's acid ground...The sandstone is a dark red, most attractive. Guy had a lot of rich clients in Germany. One saw a good deal of him, and we often talked...A withdrawn person and not very sociable."

I know that disjointed sentences like this can add an element to storytelling, but not when it's drawn out for this long. Dialog throughout the book is written in this style, with characters stating short sentences back and forth, no emphasis or descriptions provided. I'm only giving it two stars because I could see glimpses of good writing every now and then, and the story idea was good. However, as a whole I do not recommend this book.

Sorry I could not get interested. I usually like crime stories,but this was very disjointed.

This is a book by the author of the Van der Valk novels, I watched those on tv and so was intrigued to read a book by him, although this involves a different character.
It involves the investigation into the disappearance of Sibille Lefebvre, which is carried out by Henri Castang and Arlette Davidson, Van der Valk's wife, who remarried after his death, and who runs an enquiry bureau. Sibille disappears during a drive through a mountainous region. There is no activity on her bank account or credit card, and no communication from her, so it is assumed that she is probably dead.
The chapters swap around between different characters which helps keep the story moving, but I did find it heavy going in parts, I think that fans of the Van der Valk tv series will enjoy the book.
Thanks to Netgalley and Ipso books for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

2 stars

The description of this book sounded very interesting, so I ordered it. Perhaps I should have known better having had a negative experience with the last Nicolas Freeling novel I read. I thought perhaps it was a fluke, so I decided to try it again.

How sad that it happened again. Mr. Freeling’s writing style is so obtuse and wandering that I just couldn’t follow it very well. He seemed to go off on unrelated and uninteresting tangents and I just got tired of them.

I apologize that I did not care for his book. Although his writing style might interest some, it was just too much work for me. I must agree with another reviewer who said that the most interesting thing about this book was the description.

I want to thank NetGalley and Ipso Books for forwarding to me a copy of this book to read.

Because I had great difficulties in finding my way in this book, I decided to read some of the reviews of Mr. Freelings books. I choose this book from Netgalley because of the interesting desciption. For me, the only interesting thing in this book remains the description. I cannot get used to Freeling's writing, it is much too long-winded for me (says someone who loves Dickens...) and therefore I did not get a feeling for the story.
No doubt Nicolas Freeling is a wonderful author, who writes wonderful books, but sadly not for me.