To Kill a Troubadour by Martin Walker: A review

It's time for another visit to the Dordogne to see what's going on with Chief of Police Bruno, aka Benoît Courrèges, and all his friends. And as usual, we find Bruno facing a number of challenges.

Bruno has long been a fan of the folk music group Les Troubadours but all of a sudden the group becomes controversial when their new song, "Song for Catalonia," is banned by the Spanish government. Of course, being banned is just the boost the song needs to make it truly a phenomenon.

The song is songwriter Joel Martin's expression of sympathy for the Catalan bid for independence from Spain. Martin is also known as a local enthusiast for the old Occitan language of the Périgord region and for medieval troubadours and his song is a verbalization of that sympathy. But that, of course, is not a popular sentiment among the more extreme Spanish nationalists.

Amid all the brouhaha about the song, a stolen car is found on a Périgord back road, and in it is a distinctive bullet for a state-of-the-art sniper's rifle that can be used to kill from three kilometers away. The police have reason to suspect that Joel Martin may be the intended target.

Meanwhile, Bruno's good friend Florence is dismayed to learn that her abusive ex-husband is about to be paroled from prison and she is concerned that he will want a relationship with his children and may even try to take them from her. She is considering her options, including a possible move to Canada. Bruno explores ways to keep the ex-husband at arm's length and Florence and the children safe.

Of course, no problem no matter how serious can long keep Bruno and his friends from gathering for a gourmet meal featuring the products of local farms, and once again we get mouth-watering descriptions of those meals. I think it is why reading these books always makes me hungry!

This was a creditable addition to Martin Walker's Bruno series. It was not the best of the lot; after all these books have become quite predictable and I could almost write one myself. But that is almost inevitable in a long series. It's impossible to make each entry in it fresh and new. Nevertheless, I always enjoy my visits to the Dordogne and this was no exception.

The Coldest Case by Martin Walker: A review

In this latest entry in the Bruno, Chief of Police, series, the Dordogne region is suffering through a terrible drought. That gave the story a particular currency for me since we also are suffering through an intense drought. Amazingly though, the drought does not seem to have affected Bruno's garden which is just as prolific as ever. Unfortunately, I do not find that to be the case in my garden.

When Bruno isn't policing, his favorite thing to do is to cook gourmet meals for all his friends, using the produce from his garden. He finds plenty of occasions to do that during his investigation of The Coldest Case.   

The case in question has simmered along for thirty years and it is an obsession with Bruno's boss, JJ. It involves an unsolved murder of someone whose skull was found in the woods years ago. There has been no identity found for the skull and there seems little hope of ever finding out what happened. Then Bruno happens to attend an exhibit on the facial reconstruction of skulls and he wonders if that might be a way to finally identify the unknown murder victim and perhaps get the investigation off of square one. A skilled technician named Virginie is brought in to accomplish the task.

Virginie gets to work on getting the job done, but in the midst of her work, she becomes a victim herself when a very bad policeman attempts to rape her. That will not happen, of course, as long as Bruno is on the job. 

Life ambles along in Saint-Denis. Bruno interacts with his friends. The big news of the moment is that his dog, Balzac, has sired a litter of puppies and everyone in town wants one. Bruno's investigation of the old murder leads him to a reclusive vintner named Henri Bazaine who may have a connection to the Stasi, the former East German police agency. But Henri Bazaine was declared dead thirty years before! What goes on here?

This is a very gentle series as murder mystery series go. Bruno spends most of his "policing" career doing things like helping children cross the street, visiting farmers and shopkeepers, coaching rugby and tennis, and just generally making himself useful to the townspeople. All of these activities do help to keep him well informed about what is happening in St. Denis and, after all, that is an important part of being a policeman anywhere and especially in rural Dordogne where everybody knows everybody and all activities seem to be interrelated. This one was another solid entry in the series.  

The Body in the Castle Well by Martin Walker: A review

After reading a long and challenging book, I needed a quick and easy read so I turned to Martin Walker's Bruno, Chief of Police series. I generally enjoy these visits to the Perigord region of France with all the references to French history and the landscape of the region, plus, of course, the descriptions of all the delicious meals that Bruno cooks for his friends. But Walker lost me early on in this one and I was so irritated that I found myself nitpicking my way through the book. And I found a lot of nits to pick.

It was all because of the cat.

Claudia, a young American art student, is in the area to work with an aging art scholar who has a fabulous collection of paintings. In researching the paintings and their provenance, Claudia comes to suspect that some of the paintings have been falsely attributed by the scholar. 

And then Claudia ends up dead in a well.

Her body is found in the water at the bottom of the well and standing on top of her body is a kitten. Claudia was a cat lover - in a community that only seems to like dogs - and the initial speculation is that she was trying to rescue the kitten and fell into the well and drowned. The first inspection of the scene seems to bear that out.

The rescuer goes down the well and brings out the body and the kitten. He essentially tosses the kitten onto the ground and, of all the people present at the scene, no one picks the little creature up to dry it off and warm it after being in the cold well. As a cat lover myself, that pissed me off and put me in a bad mood for the rest of the book.

But after that, the investigation of the death just seems haphazard and only an excuse for bringing various characters back to St. Denis. Because you see, Claudia was from a rich and politically connected family, close to the "wayward" person in the White House and so the American ambassador gets involved and Claudia's mother comes to town to find out what's going on with the investigation and to claim her daughter's body. Soon, officials of the national police are also showing up to direct the inquiry.

Meanwhile, Bruno rides his horse Hector, plays with his cheerful basset hound's ears, feeds his chickens and ducks, gathers his gourmet vegetables from his garden, and cooks fabulous meals for his friends. Oh, and he resumes his affair with the luscious Pamela after she invites him back into her bed because he's just so irresistible. But, of course, he's still in love with Isabelle, who puts in a brief appearance just at the thoroughly complicated and unbelievable ending. And he finally seems to be noticing his neighbor Florence, who of all the women in his life seems the only one who could reasonably be a life partner. But even if he had a life partner, no doubt he would continue his affairs. C'est la vie!  

This was just a rehash of every plot in this series. As always, there was a World War II and Resistance connection. (Walker really needs to move on to another era of history.) There was just nothing especially new or particularly interesting here. Maybe the author needs to give Bruno a rest for a while.

Come to think of it, I probably need to give Bruno a rest.

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A Taste for Vengeance by Martin Walker: A review

I'm still catching up with reviews of books read in the latter part of December. This is actually the last book that I read in 2019, something to entertain in the quiet moments as the holidays wound down.

In this eleventh in the Bruno, Chief of Police series, Bruno has received a promotion. He is no longer only the chief of police for the little town of St. Denis, he now has responsibility for a wide range of territory in the Dordogne region of France which encompasses two other towns with current police with whom he must build a relationship. Bruno, who thoroughly enjoys being the chief in St. Denis and being a large fish in a small pond, is not at all sure he likes the idea of his enhanced authority and responsibility. 

Moreover, his efforts to work with the policeman in one of the new towns under his jurisdiction prove problematic when it turns out the man seems to spend most of his day drinking. He's not someone on whom Bruno can rely.

Fortunately, the head policewoman in the other town seems very proficient. She is definitely a keeper.

Bruno learns all of this as he works with them in the investigation of a double murder. An Englishwoman who was slated to attend the cooking school run by his friends, Pamela and Miranda, failed to turn up and efforts to reach her are unsuccessful. Then, her body is discovered in a local farmhouse. She had been stabbed once. The body of the owner of the house is found hanging from a tree in the woods nearby. A suicide note is found. It appears to be a murder/suicide.

But, of course, it is not that simple.

The male victim turns out to be an Irishman hated by the remnants of the IRA who have never resigned themselves to a peaceful outcome of "The Troubles". They instead continue to seek vengeance from those they consider to be their enemies. And that, it seems has been the case in the instance of the two dead bodies.

Because of the international terrorism connection, the national police of France and of the European Union become involved, which allows Bruno's former lover, Isabelle, to put in an appearance. One begins to wonder, is this woman going to continue dipping in and out of his life forever even though it is obvious the relationship is going nowhere? It seems as though Walker thinks, "Okay, time for a little sex to liven things up and provide an interlude!" And so, he brings on Isabelle. I confess to being more than a little tired of her.

The best thing about this book, as in all the series, is the description of the culture, the food, wine, history, and archaeology of the Dordogne region. But there was actually less of that in this one than in most of the books and, for that reason, it was not quite as enjoyable.  

My rating: 3 of 5 stars   

The Templars' Last Secret by Martin Walker: A review

Time to check in once again on Bruno Courreges and his friends. Bruno is the chief of police in the little town of St. Denis in the Dordogne of France. St. Denis is in the middle of an archaeological treasure trove featuring the famous painted caves and that features heavily in the plot of this book.

It is also in the middle of a region of famed French cuisine and Bruno is an avid practitioner of that cuisine, a talented cook who likes nothing better than entertaining his friends with one of his superb meals. That, as always in this series, is also an important part of the plot. 

But Bruno's day job is as chief of police and as such he is called to the scene of a death in suspicious circumstances. The body of a woman has been found at the base of a cliff. She appears to have been climbing the cliff and to have fallen to her death, but was it an accident or was she pushed? There is evidence that at least one other person was present, but that person is nowhere to be found. And it appears the body was carefully posed after the fall. Murder seems the likely conclusion and so Bruno notifies all the relevant authorities in the chain of command of French policing.

There is no identification on the body and no one claims to know her, so the first task for law enforcement will be to identify her and determine what she was doing in the area. To that end, Bruno takes pictures of her face with his cell phone.

Returning to town, Bruno learns from the mayor that an observer has been sent from Paris to follow him around and do a time and motion study of his police techniques. He is appalled at the prospect, but he soon learns that the young woman, Amélie, is an invaluable asset because of her tech-savviness. (Bruno is a Luddite.) In the end, she is instrumental in helping to crack the case.

We soon learn that the dead woman was an Israeli potentially connected to Arab terrorists and that she had been seen in the area with suspicious companions. Law enforcement goes on high alert fearing the possibility that an attack is planned on one of the monuments of the region.

We also learn that the woman herself was apparently searching for an artifact of the Knights Templar that is rumored to be in the Dordogne, possibly in one of the caves. It is unclear if the artifact really exists.

As Bruno's investigation continues, he's also preparing to be the best man at the wedding of two archaeologist friends who are getting married on the weekend.

But regardless of all this, people still have to eat and Bruno can always find time to cook for them. Martin Walker regales us with mouth-watering descriptions of the food that he cooks, all of it from local sources of course and much from his own garden. These meals are always among the highlights of these books for me. 

Although this series is a work of fiction, many of the archaeological and historical facts presented are quite real and certainly provide a feeling of verisimilitude to the stories. Moreover, there are references to current events in France which gives resonance to the tales. The books are essentially light reading and yet I always learn things about history and about France when I read them. That is a tribute to Martin Walker's talent as a writer.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fatal Pursuit by Martin Walker: A review

Let's face it, the mysteries in these Bruno, Chief of Police, "mysteries" are strictly secondary. The books are really a travelog of the Dordogne section of France, all about the laid-back country lifestyle and especially the food. 

After all, this Chief of Police is a gourmet cook who delights in preparing food for his friends and neighbors using the vegetables from his garden, fungi from the woods, and the products of the animals, mainly chickens and geese, that he and his neighbors raise. And of course the wine! Ah, the wine, at least two different kinds served at every meal and always at the ready to be served for any occasion. If Martin Walker is to be believed, the champagne flows freely in the little Dordogne community of St. Denis.

Food and wine and friends as always play big parts in the plot of Fatal Pursuit, but the main action is a car rally race. The race and a classic car parade are the main events of St. Denis' annual fête. The cars have attracted a large number of tourists to the area and the race has attracted super-rich car fanciers with big egos and vintage cars. It has also brought attention to the tale of a famous car, a Bugatti Type 57C, that disappeared in France during World War II. Supposedly one of the most beautiful cars ever made, it was one of only four that were produced and if it could be found and restored, it would be worth millions. It's enough to drive some of those seeking it over the edge with greed.

But back to the race. At the last minute, Bruno is dragooned into being the navigator for one of the drivers when her navigator reports he is ill and unable to do it. Thus we get to ride along on his - literally - hair-raising adventure.

Soon, though, Bruno's attention is drawn elsewhere when a local scholar turns up dead, maybe of natural causes, maybe not. Bruno has his suspicions and asks for an autopsy. The scholar had been researching some unknown topic, but all of his findings seem to have disappeared. Hm, I wonder if it could have had anything to do with classic cars...

This all gets very complicated when there appears to be a money laundering for terrorism operation going on and related to the exorbitantly expensive classic cars and possibly to the death of the scholar. Bruno's former lover, Isabelle, now working for the European Union's justice division, comes to town to be in charge of the terrorist-related investigation. Meantime, of course, Bruno has a new lover whom he's just met and who finds the body of the second suspicious death victim. In fact, there is no doubt about this one; he was murdered.

How will Bruno resolve it all, plus all the little community side issues that he's dealing with and still keep everyone happy and eager to attend his next gourmet meal? Never fear. He will do it while his Basset Hound Balzac charms everyone in sight.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars   

The Patriarch by Martin Walker: A review

The patriarch of the title is a World War II French pilot hero, now 90 years old. He is honored in two countries, Russia, where he fought for a while with their air force, as well as France. He is a boyhood hero of Bruno Courreges, chief of police in the little town of St. Denis in the Perigord region of France, and Bruno is overwhelmed and delighted when he is invited to the icon's 90th birthday party.

At the party, he observes Gilbert, an old comrade-in-arms of the patriarch's son Victor and said to be Victor's best friend. Bruno is called away from the party on police business and later learns that Gilbert has been found dead. The verdict of his doctor who was at the party is that the man choked on his own vomit while intoxicated, but when Bruno saw him, he was not drunk and other witnesses state that he did not appear to be intoxicated. However, the death certificate has been signed by the doctor, and Victor, in the absence of any relative, arranges for the cremation of the body which is carried out as soon as the law allows. There will be no autopsy. 

Bruno is suspicious at all of this haste and the fact that his own observations did not lead him to think that Gilbert was drunk. But there is scant evidence for him to go on. And no body. If it was murder, how will he ever prove it?

This eighth entry in the Bruno, Chief of Police, series has little in the way of plot or character development. The mystery of Gilbert's death is foreshadowed throughout and the denouement is no surprise. Mostly, this is just a mouthwatering description of a series of meals served or attended by Bruno. We get details of the preparation of the various dishes, as well as accounts of the several wines served. The diners are invariably replete and sated. 

We also get the mandatory visits with Bruno's Basset hound Balzac and his horse Hector and his various friends around St. Denis. Moreover, the narrative harks back to the action in previous books in order to bring along readers who may not have read all the books in sequence.

It also has the mandatory afternoon of hot and heavy lovemaking with a beautiful woman which is an essential part of the Bruno persona. This particular beautiful woman, though, has her own reasons for seducing the susceptible policeman.

On the whole, this was a weak entry and not my favorite in the series, but it was an okay read. Worth it for the descriptions of the food, wine, and landscape of the Perigord.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Children Return by Martin Walker: A review

Easily the best thing about these Bruno, Chief of Police, books is the descriptions of food and wine, the food usually cooked by Bruno and served along with local wines to his friends in long, leisurely meals. There wasn't much of that in this particular entry and I missed those interludes.

This is the seventh book in this series and the plot develops along three parallel paths that finally converge.

The first plot line concerns French Muslims. First, the tortured and murdered body of an undercover Muslim cop in found in the woods around Bruno's town of St. Denis. It develops that the cop had been investigating a mosque in Toulouse that may be a center of jihadist activity. Then it turns out that a local young autistic man who had been sent to a special school at the mosque had gone missing and had ended up in Afghanistan where his special skills had been exploited by the Taliban for making bombs. Now, the young man, Sami, has escaped and found his way to some French troops and is being returned to France.

Secondly, a bequest from a recently deceased Jewish doctor who, along with his sister, had been hidden from the Nazis by a family from St. Denis during World War II, offers the town a possibility of making some much needed civic improvements if they can come up with a proposal that meets the approval of the surviving sister. The sister and her grandson travel to the area to examine the sites where the two children were sheltered during the war and to view the town's proposal.

Third, the town's doctor, Fabiola, is confronted with a dark and humiliating secret from her past which threatens to destroy her fragile new relationship with the journalist Gilles, and their good friends, Bruno and his long-time paramour Pamela, rally round to try to ferret out the secret and to aid the new relationship.

Oh, and if that weren't enough, there's an intriguing American diplomat/FBI agent (a beautiful and accomplished woman, naturally!) thrown into the mix and Bruno is instantly attracted to her. 

How will all these various tales sort themselves out? Well, Martin Walker does manage to weave them all together in the end, but it is not seamless. In fact, it is a bit of a strain. 

Bruno and his puppy, Balzac, are charming characters and the best entries in this series - in my opinion - are strong on the interaction between them and their neighbors and friends, the animals on the farm, and the garden and woods which provides the ingredients for Bruno's gourmet meals. More of that, please!

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Resistance Man by Martin Walker: A review

Chief of Police Bruno Courrèges is feeling broody. He has recently remodeled and expanded the size of his house after a fire damaged it, and now he would like to add a wife and children to fill up all that empty space. Unfortunately, both of the women with whom he is currently sexually involved are not interested in marriage or children. One is married to her career and is focused on getting ahead in it. The other is an independent woman who wishes to stay that way. As far as their relationships with Bruno are concerned, they are only in it for the sex and the companionship.

And then there is Bruno's boss, the mayor of the little village of St. Denis. His wife is currently in the hospital, dying of lymphatic cancer, but that doesn't stop the mayor from auditioning a replacement for her. In this case, it is an attractive writer/professor/historian who is currently writing a book about the World War II period in France, a period when the French government surrendered and formed the Vichy administration. The French people, however, never surrendered; they kept fighting by whatever means they could find. One center of their resistance was the Perigord region, where St. Denis is located. Those who fought in the Resistance are still honored and considered great heroes there.

Time and age have already taken most of them, of course, and now one more has died. A veteran named Murcoing has died in his home and Bruno is notified. The death appears natural, not suspicious in any way, but, in time, events surrounding it become connected to a series of burglaries in the area. Someone is burglarizing vacation homes while the occupants are away and stealing valuable antiques and other belongings. It begins to appear as though Murcoing's beloved grandson Paul may be involved in those burglaries.  

Things take a more serious turn when an antiques dealer is murdered and Bruno suspects that this is connected to the burglaries. The situation becomes even more tangled when Bruno realizes that the victim, who was a homosexual, was one of the victims in a gay bashing case that he investigated several years earlier and it seems that Paul may have been another of the victims. The case was never satisfactorily resolved and continues to nag at Bruno.

The French judicial system works inexorably to solve the entangled cases and bring the perpetrators to justice, and Bruno, as usual, while performing his investigatory duties also finds time to socialize with his friends, play with his Basset puppy Balzac, ride his horse Hector, feed his chickens and his two geese Josephine and Napoleon, and cook and serve gourmet meals from his garden and his surrounding land. The great charm of this series is really the descriptions of the countryside and the laid-back lifestyle of Bruno and the other residents of St. Denis. I can feel the pounds packing on just reading about all this wonderful food and wine, and it's almost as if I've taken a vacation among the sights of the Dordogne.

At the same time, the book, which was published in 2013, also manages to educate us a bit about the history of the region and to include social commentary that seems particularly relevant to our times. I think we could take some important lessons from the Resistance men and women of France. Perhaps the most important lesson is "Never surrender!"

My rating: 4 of 5 stars    

The Devil's Cave by Martin Walker: A review

St. Denis is a small town set smack in the middle of the Perigord region of France, an area known for its gourmet foods and fine wines and for its caves. The region is dotted with them. Many served as shelter as far back as the Neanderthals and some have the magnificent paintings on their walls that bespeak the artistry and culture of long-dead peoples. 

Those caves also played an important role in the Resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II. The caves were hiding places for people, supplies, and arms. That particular bit of history still looms large in St. Denis where there are people alive who still remember it. 

One of the caves that played such a role is the so-called Devil's Cave of this book's title. It is also integral to the mystery which Bruno Courrèges, Chief of Police of St. Denis, must try to solve.

The case begins on a fine spring day as the local church choir is practicing for its Easter concert. Bruno is observing and enjoying the practice when he receives a call that tells him that a body has been found.

In fact, the body is that of a naked woman that has been laid out on a punt floating down the river. The body has a pentagram painted on her abdomen, black candles around her, and a decapitated black cockerel beside her. The scene gives all the appearances of the trappings of a Black Mass. 

There is no identification on the body or in the boat and no one recognizes her, but Bruno is finally able to identify her as the daughter of a famous woman who was part of the Resistance and who, it turns out, is still alive and living in St. Denis but has supposedly been lost to Alzheimer's Disease.

The death of the woman at first appears to be suicide, but when the autopsy is performed, it becomes apparent that it is really a case of murder. As Bruno investigates, he finds that the death may somehow be related to a scheme to build a resort village in St. Denis, something that is touted as bringing jobs, money, and prosperity to this quiet region. Digging deeper, he begins to suspect that those involved in the planning and construction are actually perpetrating a fraud on his beloved St. Denis, something they have already done in another nearby town.

In the midst of this complicated investigation, another death occurs. This time it is a local drunk and wife beater whom Bruno had recently interacted with and the death looks like a traffic accident. But once again, the autopsy gives the lie to that supposition. Bruno, in fact, has two murders on his hands, but are they related?

I'm beginning to warm up to Bruno. In previous books, I've sometimes found him smug to the point of obnoxiousness, but he came across as quite a likable human being in this book, one who really enjoys cooking for his friends and sharing his wine with them. I find reading about his food preparation as one of the more endearing aspects of these stories. 

One of the "gourmet" dishes he cooked in this book was "beer can chicken" which he learned about from a Texan with whom he was stationed in Sarajevo. That's one of the few dishes he's cooked that I'm actually familiar with!

His love of animals is also endearing. His beloved basset hound was killed in the previous book, but now here comes his friend/lover from Paris, Isabelle, with a replacement, a basset hound puppy named Balzac. I feel sure we will get to know Balzac much better in coming books. 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars  

The Crowded Grave by Martin Walker: A review

I decided to take a break from my serious reading to catch up with Chief of Police Bruno Courrèges from the idyllic village of St. Denis in the Dordogne region of France. This is the fourth entry in the popular series.

Billed as mysteries, the books are as much travelogs and gourmet cookbooks. Bruno is an accomplished chef who enjoys cooking for his friends and promoting the famous cuisine of the region. One of the staples of that cuisine is foie gras and that plays an important role in this story.

First, one has to be aware that Chief of Police Bruno tries never to arrest anybody. He always tries to mediate disputes which arise within his jurisdiction, and that is mainly the kind of action which the police get there. Petty disputes.

In this book, the dispute is between the local farmers who produce the birds for foie gras and animal rights activists, including PETA. There is also a new and inexperienced magistrate assigned to the area and she is a vegetarian and is hostile to the whole idea of force-feeding animals. At one point, one of the characters smugly (a lot of the characters in these books are smug, including Bruno) explains:

Kasimir grinned. “If there’s any cruelty, blame Mother Nature. Ducks and geese always stuff themselves to swell their livers before they fly off on winter migration. That’s how they store their energy. Everybody knows that.” From the look on Teddy’s face, it didn’t appear to Bruno that he knew that gavage, the force-feeding of the birds, was also a natural process. He glanced at Annette. She also looked surprised. 

One could point out that those ducks and geese are eating as much as they can to provide the energy that they need to survive the long autumn migration and they are eating naturally when they do so. They are not having their beaks forced open and food shoved down their gullets. Also, another character states that the farmers take care to do "minimal" injury to the gullets of the birds which they force feed, and I had to wonder just how much injury a human considers "minimal" to a bird's gullet and how does he judge that.

Sorry, Kasimir and Bruno, I'm with Annette and PETA on this one. I won't be ordering up any foie gras.

But that is an aside. The main action in this book involves the ETA, Basque terrorist group, and an archaeological dig on a St. Denis property.

This area is the location of many important finds related to Neanderthal and Cro Magnon groups and the dig described here is searching for evidence of interaction and possible interbreeding between those groups. It looks very promising. Then one of the students working with the archeologists digs up a body that is definitely not a Neanderthal or a Cro Magnon. It's a body of a man who has been in the ground for perhaps twenty-five years. He had his hands tied behind his back and had been shot in the head. Bruno and the other police authorities suspect it was an execution by the ETA.

Serendipitously, there is a meeting scheduled in St. Denis between French and Spanish authorities to discuss Basque terrorism on their border and how to deal with it. Will the ETA try to disrupt that meeting? Bruno and his cohorts must plan for the worst case scenario.

This series provides pleasant enough reads. I do enjoy the travelog aspects and, in general, the descriptions of food, but I do get rather irritated with some of the smugness of certain characters and with Bruno's dithering over his love life. Women seem to be constantly falling over themselves to seduce him. Which one will he choose? As someone else noted in their review, he reminds me of no one so much as Stephanie Plum wringing her hands over having to choose between Ranger and Joe. I got so irritated with her I finally had to stop reading that series. Not there yet with Bruno, but be forewarned, Martin Walker!

My rating: 3 of 5 stars    

     

Black Diamond by Martin Walker: A review

A trip to the rural countryside of southwestern France seemed like a good option for a few summer days' read. Martin Walker's "Bruno, Chief of Police" series has been dependably entertaining, so I picked up the next book in the series and immersed myself in the culture and concerns of the little town of Saint-Denis where men are manly, women are womanly, and children are mostly offstage except when their presence is required for dramatic effect.

The life of Saint-Denis revolves around wine, cooking, rugby, affairs of the heart, cheese, and truffles. Oh, and politics. Politics seems at the heart of most activities in the community.

We soon learn in Black Diamond that all is not wine and truffles in the lives of the citizens of the town. Tensions have arisen over immigrants coming into the area, some of whom have entered illegally, aided by human smugglers. 

As the story develops, we learn that the Chinese are at the center of the smuggling operation and they are clashing with local Vietnamese residents, most of whom came to France (or their parents did) after the French pulled out of Vietnam in the 1950s. Vietnamese businesses are being attacked by Asian assailants, who, it turns out, are Chinese, emissaries of the despised and feared Chinese triads.

But why? Why has this antipathy developed? Well, it all has to do with truffles.

The creme de la creme, so to speak, of the truffle world is the "black diamond" which grows only in the French countryside, but the Chinese have found a way to smuggle some of their own truffles into the country and substitute them for the black diamonds. It's all a part of a gigantic fraud and money laundering scheme which threatens the good name of the French truffle market and the economy which it helps to support.

Meanwhile, there is a secondary plot line having to do with the supposedly environmentalist prodigal son of a local industrialist returning home and deciding to run for mayor against his father and against the current mayor, Bruno Courreges' friend and mentor. Moreover, Bruno's current girlfriend, Pamela, is strongly attracted to the environmentalist.

Ah, it is a tangled web! It becomes even more tangled when a local hero of the French wars in Vietnam and Algeria and one of Bruno's hunting companions (another Manly Man) is brutally murdered and it appears that his murder is somehow related to the firebombing of Vietnamese businesses. Bruno must work with the national police to try to solve the crimes.

It's interesting that in each book of this series that I have so far read the central crime is related back to the victim's wartime experience or somehow connected to France's wars. I wonder if these wars continue to be omnipresent in the minds of French citizens in the twenty-first century. But then we know that the past is never dead; it isn't even past.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Dark Vineyard by Martin Walker: A review

The Dark Vineyard: A Novel of the French Countryside by Martin Walker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was recently introduced to this series, set in the Dordogne section of France in the sleepy little village of Saint-Denis, and I enjoyed the first book in the series so much that I was eager to move on to the second.

The Dark Vineyard again features Benoît (Bruno) Courrèges, chief of police of Saint-Denis, but also a talented cook and aficionado of good wines who delights in entertaining his many friends with wonderful food and wine from local sources. Some of my favorite parts of the book are descriptions of the foods he and others serve.

Bruno is an unusual policeman who is very protective of the people of his community and does not like arresting people, so he is always looking for solutions that do not involve clapping malefactors in handcuffs. For the most part, he succeeds.

He is called to the scene of a big fire at a local agricultural research station that had been involved in working on genetically modified crops. The fire had obviously been deliberately set and it destroyed a building with file cabinets containing the station's records, as well as much of the crops growing around it. It also almost killed the chief of the fire fighters when a gas can left in the building exploded. The man was rescued and pulled out of the building by Bruno.

Suspicion falls on some local committed environmentalists in regard to the setting of the fire. They had vigorously opposed the whole idea of genetically modified crops and had feared that such crops would cross-fertilize with organic crops being grown in the area. Once again, the national police are called in to head the investigation, but Bruno works with them and does his best to shield his neighbors from their suspicions.

Progress on the investigation is slow, but suddenly the urgency heats up when two suspicious deaths occur - an old man who had a small wine-making operation and the young man whom he had recently adopted as his son and heir. The young man was one of those committed environmentalists who had been under suspicion for the fire. Are the fire and the deaths of the two men somehow related?

Through all of this, Bruno continues on his daily rounds of interacting with all of the villagers, taking care of his basset hound and his chickens, shuffling off one love and perhaps taking up with a new and more promising one, and making his truffle omelet to feed his friends. One has to wonder if life in rural France is really as bucolic and idyllic as it is portrayed here. If so, I want to move there! But I suspect there may be problems which are not addressed in these stories. Even so, Saint-Denis makes a wonderful destination to escape for a few hours from the frustrations of modern American life.

I can't say that I enjoyed this book quite as much as the first one, but it was still a good read. Martin Walker obviously loves this region of the world and delights in bringing its people and culture, particularly its mouth-watering food and wines, to us in his Bruno stories.

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Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker: A review

Bruno, Chief of Police: A Novel of the French Countryside by Martin Walker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Benoit Courreges, known to everyone as Bruno, is the chief of police in the small village of St. Denis in the Dordogne region of southwestern France. He's a unique kind of policeman. He has a gun but he keeps it locked away. He makes every possible effort not to arrest people, preferring reasoning with them and sometimes turning a blind eye to minor infringements. His main challenge as a policeman seems to be protecting the vendors at the village market from the EU health and safety inspectors who are charged with ensuring that regulations are followed and who are authorized to hand out fines to those who attempt to circumvent the rules.

Bruno is an orphan who found his calling as a soldier serving with United Nations forces in Bosnia. Coming home, he had a mentor in one of his former commanders in Bosnia and through the efforts of that man, now the mayor of the town, Bruno became chief of police and found a sense of family at last in the people of his village. He is completely devoted to them and to the welfare of his community.

That community includes some Arabs, descendants of immigrants from North Africa. One particular family is well-known and highly esteemed by the close-knit citizenry. The village is rocked when the patriarch of that family, a man who was considered a war hero who had won the Croix de Guerre for his services in Vietnam, is brutally murdered, with a swastika carved on his chest. The murder brings to the fore hidden racial and cultural resentments and threatens to rip apart the unity and the easy-going rhythms that have long marked life in this community.

The national police are charged with the investigation of the crime, but Bruno, as the local expert, is attached to the team of investigators. It soon develops that the roots of the crime reach far back to World War II days and the role that the French Resistance played. It seems that the victim may not have always been the hero that his family believed him to be. The writer was able to seamlessly weave in details of the World War II experience in the French countryside which helped to make the story more realistic.

Throughout the investigation, Bruno continues his daily interaction with all the locals, the friends and neighbors who are a part of his circle. We get to know them all as they meet at the market, play tennis or rugby, visit the local caves which contain prehistoric paintings, and especially as they share meals. And what fabulous meals! Food is an integral part of this story. Well, it is France, isn't it?

This is the first in a series. I learned about it through one of my blogger buddies, Snap of Tales from Twisty Lane. It's a favorite of hers and since I have found that she and I often agree on reading material, I was interested to give it a try. I'm glad I did. It is well-written, humanistic in philosophy, and the characters are believable and thoroughly likable. It actually reminded me somewhat of Alexander McCall Smith's Botswana series featuring Precious Ramotswe. Moreover, I thought the plot and the pacing of the story were deftly done and, even though the story moved at the pace of country life and there was not a lot of action, it was sufficient to keep the reader interested and turning the pages to see what Bruno would do next.

I particularly enjoyed the writer's vivid descriptions of what must be a truly beautiful region. It is obviously a place that he knows well and loves, and I look forward to learning more about it in future books in the series. 


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