Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0881846139, Paperback)

The first in the Edgar-winning Inspector Van der Valk series Alluring, unstable, and frantically self-absorbed, Elsa de Charmoy was a dangerous woman, and now she’s a dead one, shot with a gun bought by Martin, her former lover. Sulking in an Amsterdam jail, Martin swears it’s been years since he saw Elsa, but Inspector Van der Valk isn’t quite ready to be persuaded. Like Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret (to whom he is often compared), Van der Valk tends to pick apart the details, ideally over a good meal. And while Van der Valk’s ruminations may frustrate his more action-minded colleagues, they inevitably yield a surprising resolution. Freeling knew both prison and good meals: Arrested while working as a chef in a Dutch hotel, he began writing Love in Amsterdam (also titled Death in Amsterdam) on paper swiped from his jailhouse-job wrapping bars of soap. The soap’s loss was readers’ gain: Freeling went on to win every important prize in mystery fiction in the U.S., France and the UK.