By Paul Carrier
For a guy who loves his job as much as Bruno Courrèges does, the police chief in the fictional French village of St. Denis sure has a lot of problems to juggle.
Archeology students find the skeleton of a (recent) murder victim at a local dig. Animal-rights activists take aim at the local foie gras trade, releasing ducks and geese from one farm and vandalizing a second. After someone steals dynamite from a quarry, a foie gras producer’s business blows up.
All of which would be enough to keep Bruno busy for a while, but then the professor in charge of the dig disappears, leaving behind signs of a struggle at his home. And Bruno gets roped into the planning operation for a high-level summit between top French and Spanish officials, amid fears that Basque terrorists may target the meeting.
This fourth installment in Martin Walker’s Bruno series (following 2011’s Black Diamond) revisits familiar themes: Bruno’s dedication to his adopted home of St. Denis in the Périgord region of southwestern France; his special bond with his basset hound, Gigi; Bruno’s standing as a respected tennis and rugby coach; and his skills as a much-admired chef.
That last point is a key element in this series. The residents of St. Denis and environs include an impressive number of wine experts and lovers of fine dining; much attention is paid to the preparation of meals. When Bruno has lunch at a local restaurant with a veteran detective from a nearby city, for example, his hard-nosed dining companion says of the restaurateur: “He does a good béchamel sauce, your Ivan.”
Bruno’s somewhat tumultuous personal life resurfaces as well, as the amorous bachelor muses over his unsettled relationship with a former lover and his current romantic entanglement with a spirited, independent-minded British woman who lives in St. Denis.
But this time we encounter a side of Bruno we have not seen before, when his unique style of policing— he rarely makes arrests and seldom carries a gun — prompts him to protect a local farmer from misguided criminal charges.
Bruno surreptitiously helps an animal-rights activist avoid prosecution. And he takes on an inexperienced and headstrong magistrate newly assigned to his turf, further complicating his life when she turns against him.
In a 2013 interview with bookpage.com, Walker said Bruno combines policing with “humor, common sense and his very idiosyncratic sense of justice.” That’s certainly on display here.
St. Denis itself is as much a character in every Bruno novel as the criminals Bruno seeks to apprehend. In The Crowded Grave, the narrator lovingly details the view that greets Bruno when he finds himself on a plateau overlooking St. Denis.
“Bruno gazed down on the gentle valley and the town below. The sun’s rays gleamed gold on the cockerel atop the war memorial. They breathed warmth into the honey-colored stone of the buildings. The eddies of the river danced in the sunlight as they rippled beneath the arches of the bridge that dated from Napoléon’s rule.”
Walker is too skilled a storyteller to allow the scenic, culinary and romantic charms of rural France to smother the plot of The Crowded Grave, which concludes with a propulsive kick and a shattering turn of events that readers will not soon forget. Suffice it to say that, by novel's end, Bruno’s life is forever changed.
Archeology students find the skeleton of a (recent) murder victim at a local dig. Animal-rights activists take aim at the local foie gras trade, releasing ducks and geese from one farm and vandalizing a second. After someone steals dynamite from a quarry, a foie gras producer’s business blows up.
All of which would be enough to keep Bruno busy for a while, but then the professor in charge of the dig disappears, leaving behind signs of a struggle at his home. And Bruno gets roped into the planning operation for a high-level summit between top French and Spanish officials, amid fears that Basque terrorists may target the meeting.
This fourth installment in Martin Walker’s Bruno series (following 2011’s Black Diamond) revisits familiar themes: Bruno’s dedication to his adopted home of St. Denis in the Périgord region of southwestern France; his special bond with his basset hound, Gigi; Bruno’s standing as a respected tennis and rugby coach; and his skills as a much-admired chef.
That last point is a key element in this series. The residents of St. Denis and environs include an impressive number of wine experts and lovers of fine dining; much attention is paid to the preparation of meals. When Bruno has lunch at a local restaurant with a veteran detective from a nearby city, for example, his hard-nosed dining companion says of the restaurateur: “He does a good béchamel sauce, your Ivan.”
Bruno’s somewhat tumultuous personal life resurfaces as well, as the amorous bachelor muses over his unsettled relationship with a former lover and his current romantic entanglement with a spirited, independent-minded British woman who lives in St. Denis.
But this time we encounter a side of Bruno we have not seen before, when his unique style of policing— he rarely makes arrests and seldom carries a gun — prompts him to protect a local farmer from misguided criminal charges.
Bruno surreptitiously helps an animal-rights activist avoid prosecution. And he takes on an inexperienced and headstrong magistrate newly assigned to his turf, further complicating his life when she turns against him.
In a 2013 interview with bookpage.com, Walker said Bruno combines policing with “humor, common sense and his very idiosyncratic sense of justice.” That’s certainly on display here.
St. Denis itself is as much a character in every Bruno novel as the criminals Bruno seeks to apprehend. In The Crowded Grave, the narrator lovingly details the view that greets Bruno when he finds himself on a plateau overlooking St. Denis.
“Bruno gazed down on the gentle valley and the town below. The sun’s rays gleamed gold on the cockerel atop the war memorial. They breathed warmth into the honey-colored stone of the buildings. The eddies of the river danced in the sunlight as they rippled beneath the arches of the bridge that dated from Napoléon’s rule.”
Walker is too skilled a storyteller to allow the scenic, culinary and romantic charms of rural France to smother the plot of The Crowded Grave, which concludes with a propulsive kick and a shattering turn of events that readers will not soon forget. Suffice it to say that, by novel's end, Bruno’s life is forever changed.
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