Having started an investigation of irregularities in the truffle market in nearby Ste. Alvere (alerted to them by his friend Hercule Vendrot) and when Hercule is murdered, tortured and apparently strung up as a warning to others you’d have to assume the death is related to the investigation. It is, of course, but not in the way you’d expect, since Hercule’s past includes a stint as a military intelligence officer aware of torture, assassinations and upheaval during the colonial wars in Vietnam and Algeria.
Like Donna Leon’s Brunetti, Bruno is a normal bloke, moderately quirk-free, which makes a change from flawed and miserable ex-alcoholic protagonists with failed marriages, difficult interactions with their children and strained relations in the office and, again like Brunetti or Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano (though neither of them cook) the setting and an appreciation of fine food and wine delivers a rich backdrop through which Walker manoeuvres the twists and turns of the plot line.
At the time of writing, I’m on the verge of starting Bruno Number Four, Need to track down Number One and looking forward to Number Five.
- The Crowded Grave (2011), where truffles, local politics and Asian crime gangs are replaced by foie gras , animal rights, archaeological findings and Basque nationalists.
The recipe this time around:
Take a series of attacks on local foie gras producers by animal rights activists and add an archaeological team looking for Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal relics that unearths a corpse with a Swatch on its wrist and a bullet in the head. Incorporate a new vegetarian feminist magistrate out to make a name for herself, small town political conflict with the officious barely competent and possibly corrupt head of the local Gendarmerie and an approaching summit between France and Spain to announce an agreement to share intelligence about Basque terrorist activities.
While he’s already got plenty on his plate with the unidentified body and the foie gras issue, the summit is likely to attract unwanted attention and ex-military man Bruno is an obvious candidate for the local security detail, as is his his Paris-based former lover Isabelle, on the mend from gunshot wounds at the end of the previous episode. That sets up issues with Bruno's current flame Pamela, who in turn is forced to deal with her mother’s stroke and her ex-husband.
Complicating events further, two of the foreign students at the dig are obviously involved with the animal-rights vandalism, the professor in charge of the dig goes missing, as does a cache of dynamite at the local quarry. There are links to the SS, the Baader-Meinhof Gang and the Red Army Faction as various plot lines intertwine and unexpected connexions surface.
Possibly the best in the series to date, and reason to look forward to Bruno #5.
- The Devil’s Cave (2012), where the village of St Denis is hit by a combination of domestic violence, Satanism, dodgy property developers, the fall out from the Global Financial Crisis, a high class knocking shop catering to the world’s arms dealers and almost-forgotten activities of the resistance movement during World War Two. Predictably, all of the above are interlinked, though things take a while to unfold.
First, a naked female body marked with a pentagram drifts through the village on an old punt while Bruno is dealing with a case of domestic abuse and he’s on the verge of getting the sports hall he’d been trying to raise funds for thanks to a proposed property development. His friend the Mayor’s all for the development, and isn’t too pleased by the publicity that stems from the Satanic theme, though it does manage to bring a flood of curious tourists to the town in the lead up to Easter, particularly after evidence of further Satanic rituals turns up in the nearby caves that were already a significant tourist attraction.