By Paul Carrier
His name is Benoît Courrèges, but everyone calls him Bruno in the French village where he serves as the police chief. It is, under the circumstances, a rather grandiose title. The force that Bruno leads consists of, well, himself.
The protagonist in Martin Walker’s 11 Bruno novels is anything but a stereotypical police chief, and not only because he has no subordinates. Bruno is a French army veteran who was wounded during a peacekeeping mission in the Balkans, but he’s also a quiet, contemplative fellow, a gourmet cook who doesn’t carry a gun and rarely, if ever, makes an arrest.
The rugby-playing bachelor lives with his basset hound Gigi in a renovated shepherd’s cottage in the south of France in Bruno, Chief of Police, the first novel in the series. Bruno gardens, tends his chickens and enjoys his impressive home library when he isn’t coaching kids in rugby and tennis and helping local farmers circumvent pesky European Union food-safety rules.
Bruno’s tranquil life in la France profonde, the “deepest France” of the Périgord countryside, is shattered when Hamid al-Bakr, an elderly French veteran of Algerian descent who fought in Vietnam and the Algerian War, is found brutally murdered in his home, with a swastika carved in his chest.
Investigators quickly zero in on two teenagers with possible ties to the anti-immigrant National Front, but solid evidence linking them to the killing proves elusive.
Ostensibly, our hero’s role in the murder investigation is marginal, what with the involvement of the Gendarmerie Nationale, the Police Nationale and Lucien Tavernier, a young, arrogant magistrate flown in from Paris to call the shots.
But what Bruno lacks in prestige he more than makes up for in tenacity and local knowledge. So of course he refuses to sit on the sidelines, especially when he sees the probe head off in what he suspects may be the wrong direction.
Bruno, Chief of Police has a contemporary feel, as xenophobia and religious tensions bubble to the surface following the murder of al-Bakr, even though his family is well-established in Bruno’s fictional hometown of St. Denis. Over time, France’s past woes figure in the plot as well, as secrets from the Nazi occupation come into play in solving the crime.
Walker gradually reveals Bruno’s compelling back story, including his orphaned youth and his devastating wartime experiences in Bosnia. On a lighter note, much attention is paid to culinary matters, making this a novel that is not to be read while dieting.
When Bruno and his closest friends wrap up a tennis match, for instance, they prepare for their “ceremonial Friday lunch,” which is no grab-a-sandwich affair. The meal includes Bruno’s eggs, herbs, young garlic, flat-leaf parsley and truffles stored in oil. Other participants in the feast supply pâté, rillettes of pork, bread, cheese, a bottle of Scotch, steaks, a tarte aux pommes and, of course, the ever-present wine.
Bruno, Chief of Police is deeply rooted in its locale, which Walker lovingly portrays as a region of great beauty and mildly idiosyncratic residents. (Jérôme runs a history theme park “where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake twice a day and Marie Antoinette was guillotined every hour, with medieval jousting in between.”) The locals’ abiding love for France is only exceeded by their even greater devotion to their beloved St. Denis and the Périgord region.
Village life may not always be idyllic, but to Bruno's mind it is greatly preferable to the pretensions and blind ambition of those who scramble to succeed in the scheming world of faraway Paris. To some extent, that outlook may reflect Walker's view as well. The author divides his time between Washington D.C. and a home he and his wife share in a French village.
The Périgord “lies at the heart of so many things,” Walker said in a 2015 interview with francetoday.com. “All our history is there, the 17,000-year old cave paintings of Lascaux and the medieval castles and the legends of the chevalier-troubadours like Bertrand de Borne, to the Resistance dramas of World War Two.” The region is “a beguiling mixture of the deeply familiar and the exotic.” No wonder Bruno loves living there.
The protagonist in Martin Walker’s 11 Bruno novels is anything but a stereotypical police chief, and not only because he has no subordinates. Bruno is a French army veteran who was wounded during a peacekeeping mission in the Balkans, but he’s also a quiet, contemplative fellow, a gourmet cook who doesn’t carry a gun and rarely, if ever, makes an arrest.
The rugby-playing bachelor lives with his basset hound Gigi in a renovated shepherd’s cottage in the south of France in Bruno, Chief of Police, the first novel in the series. Bruno gardens, tends his chickens and enjoys his impressive home library when he isn’t coaching kids in rugby and tennis and helping local farmers circumvent pesky European Union food-safety rules.
Bruno’s tranquil life in la France profonde, the “deepest France” of the Périgord countryside, is shattered when Hamid al-Bakr, an elderly French veteran of Algerian descent who fought in Vietnam and the Algerian War, is found brutally murdered in his home, with a swastika carved in his chest.
Investigators quickly zero in on two teenagers with possible ties to the anti-immigrant National Front, but solid evidence linking them to the killing proves elusive.
Ostensibly, our hero’s role in the murder investigation is marginal, what with the involvement of the Gendarmerie Nationale, the Police Nationale and Lucien Tavernier, a young, arrogant magistrate flown in from Paris to call the shots.
But what Bruno lacks in prestige he more than makes up for in tenacity and local knowledge. So of course he refuses to sit on the sidelines, especially when he sees the probe head off in what he suspects may be the wrong direction.
Bruno, Chief of Police has a contemporary feel, as xenophobia and religious tensions bubble to the surface following the murder of al-Bakr, even though his family is well-established in Bruno’s fictional hometown of St. Denis. Over time, France’s past woes figure in the plot as well, as secrets from the Nazi occupation come into play in solving the crime.
Walker gradually reveals Bruno’s compelling back story, including his orphaned youth and his devastating wartime experiences in Bosnia. On a lighter note, much attention is paid to culinary matters, making this a novel that is not to be read while dieting.
When Bruno and his closest friends wrap up a tennis match, for instance, they prepare for their “ceremonial Friday lunch,” which is no grab-a-sandwich affair. The meal includes Bruno’s eggs, herbs, young garlic, flat-leaf parsley and truffles stored in oil. Other participants in the feast supply pâté, rillettes of pork, bread, cheese, a bottle of Scotch, steaks, a tarte aux pommes and, of course, the ever-present wine.
Bruno, Chief of Police is deeply rooted in its locale, which Walker lovingly portrays as a region of great beauty and mildly idiosyncratic residents. (Jérôme runs a history theme park “where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake twice a day and Marie Antoinette was guillotined every hour, with medieval jousting in between.”) The locals’ abiding love for France is only exceeded by their even greater devotion to their beloved St. Denis and the Périgord region.
Village life may not always be idyllic, but to Bruno's mind it is greatly preferable to the pretensions and blind ambition of those who scramble to succeed in the scheming world of faraway Paris. To some extent, that outlook may reflect Walker's view as well. The author divides his time between Washington D.C. and a home he and his wife share in a French village.
The Périgord “lies at the heart of so many things,” Walker said in a 2015 interview with francetoday.com. “All our history is there, the 17,000-year old cave paintings of Lascaux and the medieval castles and the legends of the chevalier-troubadours like Bertrand de Borne, to the Resistance dramas of World War Two.” The region is “a beguiling mixture of the deeply familiar and the exotic.” No wonder Bruno loves living there.
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