SOME DAY TOMORROW

Freeling, who stopped writing his series about Dutch inspector Van der Valk in 1989 (Sand Castles) and French policeman Henri Castang in 1996 (A Dwarf Kingdom), now wanders to the other side of the law with the creation of Hubertus van Bijl, a 70-year-old former flower merchant of Haarlem, Netherlands, who calls himself Bert throughout this long soliloquy. Bert, as he recalls it, has been visited by Detective Dycksma and Sergeant Bout from the Serious Crimes Bureau, making inquiries about the murder of Carla Zomerlust, a university student. At first denying more than a casual knowledge of the girl (“Did she have a dog? Bouncy sort of wooly dog. I think I noticed that . . .”), Bert backtracks in his ruminations to explain his interest in other young girls, talk about his good friend’s wife, and share his 40 years’ knowledge of his own spouse. He discourses on three generations of men in his family, recalls his ouster from his own business, his bout with prostate cancer, and explores everything Dutch, from foibles to scruples. He discusses his arrest and his release (“Not Proven”), his conversations with lawyers and psychiatrists and his victim’s father, and, ultimately, with patients at the Asylum for the Criminally Insane, giving special attention to the double meaning of the word “Asylum.”

A superb epitome of national characteristics but barely a glimmer of a plot. As for Bert, it’s difficult to feel much intimacy with a man who refers to himself only in the third person.