Henri Castang Books In Order

Publication Order of Henri Castang Books

Henri Castang is a mind blowing series of mystery, adult, cultural, unfinished, thriller, suspense, and crime fiction stories. It was written by a prolific British novelist of crime novels, Nicolas Freeling. This series is comprised of 16 novels in total released between 1974 and 1996. Each of the books of this series features the chief protagonist in the role of Henri Castang, a detective inspector living in Brussels, Belgium. Nicolas Freeling has set the stories’ plots in and around Belgium, and various other European cities. Henri Castang is seen trying to solve various mysteries that he comes across. Other than Henri Castang, author Freeling has created many more interesting characters for this series. Some of the most essential ones include Colette Delavigne, Madame Lecat, Sibille Lebfebvre, Guy Lebfebvre, Arlette Davidson, Monsieur Dampierre, Vera, etc. All of the 16 books were liked by the readers very much. They were highly appreciated by the readers from across the world, who responded with great comments and reviews on various literary platforms.

Many noteworthy critics and fellow writers praised Nicolas Freeling for his depiction of the exciting characters and rich cultural heritage of the European countries. This series’ success was the result of the success of Nicolas Freeling’s first novel series, the Van Der Valk series. He had already established himself among the prominent authors after the successful release of Van Der Valk novels. As a result, the Henri Castang novels received a huge fan-following and ended up being greatly successful. Nicolas Freeling was highly grateful to his fans for liking the novels and appreciating them. He had received a huge motivation after the success of the first few books of Henri Castang. This enabled him to write several more titles and add them to the series. The books featured in a number of literary magazines and journals in different countries of the world. Many reviewers have spoken highly of Nicolas Freeling for his excellent writing skills. Numerous aspiring authors see him as an inspiration.

Nicolas Freeling is an internationally acclaimed writer of crime stories. Over the course of his literary career, Freeling wrote over 40 novels. He has won some of the most prestigious awards in the crime fiction genre, such as the Golden Dagger, Grand Prix de Roman Policier, and the Edgar Award. Nicolas Freeling had started writing for the first time in 1959. It was during his prison time of three weeks in Amsterdam that he tried to create a story. The jail sentence was due to a conviction for stealing food, although he had not actually stolen the food. After his release, the Amsterdam authorities deported him to England and Nicolas decided to use the experience of his imprisonment and deportation to write his first detective story featuring Piet Can Der Valk. The book was called Love in Amsterdam and its release brought a lot of fame and popularity for Nicolas Freeling. From this point onwards, he did not long and went on to have a long and prosperous writing career. Nicolas had to face some criticism from the readers and critics for killing off the detective inspector Van Der Valk in the last book of the series. But, when he came up with the creation of another detective inspector, Henri Castang, the criticism subsided.

Nicolas Freeling began writing the Henri Castang novels 2 years after he finished writing the final Van Der Valk story. Taking a lesson from his previous experience, Freeling did not kill Henri Castang at the end. Besides his novel series, Nicolas Freeling wrote 4 nonfiction titles, two of which were inspired by his experience of twelve years working as a chef. He had also written a book consisting of essays about the best crime writers of literature as well as his memoir called The Village Book. Nicolas Freeling preferred to focus on social institutions and human psychology, and so, he did not think of himself as much of a crime writer. Whenever he sat down to write a story, he used to give a lot of attention to detail. Also, he used to carry out a vast research on the topics of his interest. An example of this is the fact that he worked closely with an American physicist named Peter Zimmerman for achieving accurate renderings of the nuclear instruments for writing the novel Gadget. The exchanged notes, drawings, papers, and research works of the two men are preserved in Ransom Center for research.

A mind blowing book of the Henri Castang series written by author Nicolas Freeling is entitled ‘Lady Macbeth’. It was published in 2017 by the Ipso Books publication after its initial release in 1988. The book features the main characters as Arlette Davidson, Guy Lebfebvre, Henri Castang, and Sibille Lebfebvre. At the start, Sibille and Guy are introduced as a married pair. While driving through the Vosges Mountains roads, they have a heated argument. Later, the Guy comes back home, but Sibille is not found anywhere. The Lebfebvres had a pretty normal marriage. There were more happy times between them than the bad ones. During their argument, Sibille gets down from the car and refuses to come home with Guy. Six months pass and Sibille has still not returned home. Her family has not heard from her and neither has any activity taken place in her bank account. What troubles the investigating authorities is the fact that Guy is not bothered even a little bit to find his missing wife. When Arlette Davidson takes charge of the case, she thinks that something sinister has taken place and Guy is somehow involved in it. She takes the help of Henri Castang and starts looking for Sibille. When she interrogates Guy, he informs that Sibille is too stubborn and egoistic to return on her own. So, he is also not bothered to reach out to her. Both Henri Castang and Arlette Davidson wonder how they are going to establish that Sibille is dead? Also, if at all they succeed in doing so, how are they going to prove and find the killer? They know Guy has the answers to all their questions and decide to make him speak by using all means possible.

Another intriguing book of the series is called ‘A Dwarf Kingdom’. The House of Stratus published this book in 2001, however, it was initially released in 1996. This novel’s story begins by depicting that 2 friends get brutally murdered and the case comes to Henri Castang for investigation. But, he thinks it is time for his retirement and moves to a remote villa along with his wife. Henri’s expectation of a life in the semi-rural region is short-lived as he begins to see the downside of it. Shortly after, his granddaughter gets kidnapped and he thinks that the notorious real-estate mogul, having eyes on his property has a hand in it. Henri Castang sets out to use his investigative skills one final time and save his granddaughter before time runs out.