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For once, Inspector Bruno Courrèges, the Chef de Police in the small French town of St. Denis, just north of the Dordogne, is carrying a gun, but fortunately only for ceremonial purposes. ETA, the Basque separatist group has assassinated a senior French policeman and the villagers are gathering the square to honour his memory. Afterwards, Bruno learns that a French/Spanish summit is to be held in the local chateau and his employer, the mayor, has agreed to a request for Bruno's assistance from the Brigadier, a shadowy figure in French Intelligence, who invariably complicates Bruno's life whenever their paths cross. The summit isn't the only problem Bruno has to contend with. He also has to deal with the problems of animal rights activists targeting the local farmers who make a living rearing ducks and geese for the production the local delicacy, foie gras, whilst also contending with the arrival of a new magistrate who doesn't exactly see eye to eye with the locals on such matters. In addition, archaeologists working on a prehistoric site in the area find startling evidence of a more recent burial, with a bullet hole in the skull providing a very obvious clue that the most recent inhabitant of the somewhat crowded grave didn't die of natural causes. Despite the idyllic setting and sumptuous descriptions of the local food and wine, Walker never reduces the inhabitants of his small towns and villages to caricatures in the lamentable manner of some writers. Perhaps the closest he comes to a stereotype is in the depiction of new magistrate, Annette Meraillon. She's young, vegetarian and has little sympathy with the plight of the small farmers who rely for their living on raising birds for an industry that she thoroughly disapproves of. She gets off on the wrong foot in St Denis and appears to be little more than a convenient plot device to provide some local tension but it was surprisingly easy to warm to her as the book progressed and I suspect Bruno may well have more dealings with her in future stories. I can't help feeling that Walker is struggling to provide a convincing love interest for his main character and here Bruno is again trying to come to terms with his feelings both for independent Englishwoman, Pamela, with Isabelle, a police inspector on the Brigadier's staff, brought in to help with the summit, even though she is still recovering from injuries sustained in the line of duty when she last worked with Bruno. I hope Walker can resist the temptation to make this potential love triangle a recurring feature of future books and the way he shipped Pamela off to the UK to the bedside of her elderly mother was a ruse faintly reminiscent of the way authors of children's books so often used to deal with the inconvenient presence of parents. The book has a wonderful sense of place, bringing the region and its people vividly to life. This is an area where old enmities run deep, and if you scratch the surface, the past will bleed all too horrifically into the present, as Bruno finds out to his cost. At times, I was almost in danger of being lulled into a false sense of security, but then, when I was least expecting it, Walker jolted me out of my complacency by providing a shocking reminder in the closing stages that he is never likely to go down the well-trodden and disappointing route of delivering nothing more than a gastronomic cosy. § Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.
Reviewed by Linda Wilson, October 2011
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