Sand Castles

Freeling introduced Inspector Van der Valk in 1964 ( Love In Amsterdam ) and in his tenth book ( A Long Silence ) killed him off. The inspector's return here is sure to rally old fans. The unspecified time sounds modern--``The bawdy houses advertise safe sex''--as Van der Valk, now a middle-aged, mostly desk-bound Commissaris, vacations in northern Holland with his French-born wife, Arlette. Through a fluke, Van der Valk uncovers a small-town kiddy-porn ring, and does a one-man good-cop-bad-cop routine. At the German border he and Arlette meet a friendly Dutch-born entrepreneur whose old-fashioned jingoistic politics turn sinister after the apparent murder (the body vanishes) of a possible police agent. Van der Valk and Arlette face danger and a nasty American evangelist before a couple of villains are neutralized. Like his idiosyncratic hero and heroine--he bashes the Dutch, she the French, for example--Freeling rewards with his oblique, subtly comic style. (Feb.)