• The Dark Vineyard, where an arson attack on a research station where genetically modified crops are being grown, apparently without the necessary paperwork being filed, is followed by two seemingly accidental deaths caused by inhaling carbon dioxide from fermenting grapes while a California winery is seeking to set up a large scale mass production winery and an attractive female French Canadian would-be winemaker turns out to be something other than what she seems.

The protagonist and the setting both work well, and Mr Walker goes on the list of authors to watch for when it comes to visiting the local library, and if one of the titles happens to catch the eye in an el cheapo bin...

  • Black Diamond (2010), where a scam involving the region’s truffle harvest, a local governnment election and a turf war between Asian crime syndicates combine to throw complications into the day to day life of Bruno’s quiet rural lifestyle, with its markets, hunting and hearty rural cuisine.

As the Chief of Police in St. Denis, Bruno Courrèges has plenty on his plate, but still finds time to teach kids to play tennis, train the town's up and coming rugby players and go hunting with his friends. He also, obviously, has a keen interest in the outcome of the local elections, where the Green candidate Guillaume (Call me Bill) Pons, having succeded in closing down his father’s sawmill, has managed to put together a joint ticket with the Socialists, looks likely to oust the incumbent and is in the process of disrupting the emerging relationship between Bruno and Pamela, the expatriate Englishwoman who turned up in The Dark Vineyard.

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.

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