The Nature of Things

After reading a long and challenging book, I needed a quick and easy read so I turned to Martin Walker's Bruno, Chief of Police series. I generally enjoy these visits to the Perigord region of France with all the references to French history and the landscape of the region, plus, of course, the descriptions of all the delicious meals that Bruno cooks for his friends. But Walker lost me early on in this one and I was so irritated that I found myself nitpicking my way through the book. And I found a lot of nits to pick. It was all because of the cat. Claudia, a young American art student, is in the area to work with an aging art scholar who has a fabulous collection of paintings. In researching the paintings and their provenance, Claudia comes to suspect that some of the paintings have been falsely attributed by the scholar.  And then Claudia ends up dead in a well. Her body is found in the water at the bottom of the well and standing on top of her body is a kitten. Claudia was a cat...

I'm still catching up with reviews of books read in the latter part of December. This is actually the last book that I read in 2019, something to entertain in the quiet moments as the holidays wound down. In this eleventh in the Bruno, Chief of Police series, Bruno has received a promotion. He is no longer only the chief of police for the little town of St. Denis, he now has responsibility for a wide range of territory in the Dordogne region of France which encompasses two other towns with current police with whom he must build a relationship. Bruno, who thoroughly enjoys being the chief in St. Denis and being a large fish in a small pond, is not at all sure he likes the idea of his enhanced authority and responsibility.  Moreover, his efforts to work with the policeman in one of the new towns under his jurisdiction prove problematic when it turns out the man seems to spend most of his day drinking. He's not someone on whom Bruno can rely. Fortunately, the head policewoman in t...

Time to check in once again on Bruno Courreges and his friends. Bruno is the chief of police in the little town of St. Denis in the Dordogne of France. St. Denis is in the middle of an archaeological treasure trove featuring the famous painted caves and that features heavily in the plot of this book. It is also in the middle of a region of famed French cuisine and Bruno is an avid practitioner of that cuisine, a talented cook who likes nothing better than entertaining his friends with one of his superb meals. That, as always in this series, is also an important part of the plot.  But Bruno's day job is as chief of police and as such he is called to the scene of a death in suspicious circumstances. The body of a woman has been found at the base of a cliff. She appears to have been climbing the cliff and to have fallen to her death, but was it an accident or was she pushed? There is evidence that at least one other person was present, but that person is nowhere to be found. And it ap...

Let's face it, the mysteries in these Bruno, Chief of Police, "mysteries" are strictly secondary. The books are really a travelog of the Dordogne section of France, all about the laid-back country lifestyle and especially the food.  After all, this Chief of Police is a gourmet cook who delights in preparing food for his friends and neighbors using the vegetables from his garden, fungi from the woods, and the products of the animals, mainly chickens and geese, that he and his neighbors raise. And of course the wine! Ah, the wine, at least two different kinds served at every meal and always at the ready to be served for any occasion. If Martin Walker is to be believed, the champagne flows freely in the little Dordogne community of St. Denis. Food and wine and friends as always play big parts in the plot of Fatal Pursuit , but the main action is a car rally race. The race and a classic car parade are the main events of St. Denis' annual  fête. The c ars have attracted a ...

The patriarch of the title is a World War II French pilot hero, now 90 years old. He is honored in two countries, Russia, where he fought for a while with their air force, as well as France. He is a boyhood hero of Bruno Courreges, chief of police in the little town of St. Denis in the Perigord region of France, and Bruno is overwhelmed and delighted when he is invited to the icon's 90th birthday party. At the party, he observes Gilbert, an old comrade-in-arms of the patriarch's son Victor and said to be Victor's best friend. Bruno is called away from the party on police business and later learns that Gilbert has been found dead. The verdict of his doctor who was at the party is that the man choked on his own vomit while intoxicated, but when Bruno saw him, he was not drunk and other witnesses state that he did not appear to be intoxicated. However, the death certificate has been signed by the doctor, and Victor, in the absence of any relative, arranges for the cremation of...

Easily the best thing about these Bruno, Chief of Police, books is the descriptions of food and wine, the food usually cooked by Bruno and served along with local wines to his friends in long, leisurely meals. There wasn't much of that in this particular entry and I missed those interludes. This is the seventh book in this series and the plot develops along three parallel paths that finally converge. The first plot line concerns French Muslims. First, the tortured and murdered body of an undercover Muslim cop in found in the woods around Bruno's town of St. Denis. It develops that the cop had been investigating a mosque in Toulouse that may be a center of jihadist activity. Then it turns out that a local young autistic man who had been sent to a special school at the mosque had gone missing and had ended up in Afghanistan where his special skills had been exploited by the Taliban for making bombs. Now, the young man, Sami, has escaped and found his way to some French troops and...

Chief of Police Bruno  Courrèges is feeling broody. He has recently remodeled and expanded the size of his house after a fire damaged it, and now he would like to add a wife and children to fill up all that empty space. Unfortunately, both of the women with whom he is currently sexually involved are not interested in marriage or children. One is married to her career and is focused on getting ahead in it. The other is an independent woman who wishes to stay that way. As far as their relationships with Bruno are concerned, they are only in it for the sex and the companionship. And then there is Bruno's boss, the mayor of the little village of St. Denis. His wife is currently in the hospital, dying of lymphatic cancer, but that doesn't stop the mayor from auditioning a replacement for her. In this case, it is an attractive writer/professor/historian who is currently writing a book about the World War II period in France, a period when the French government surrendered and formed ...

St. Denis is a small town set smack in the middle of the Perigord region of France, an area known for its gourmet foods and fine wines and for its caves. The region is dotted with them. Many served as shelter as far back as the Neanderthals and some have the magnificent paintings on their walls that bespeak the artistry and culture of long-dead peoples.  Those caves also played an important role in the Resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II. The caves were hiding places for people, supplies, and arms. That particular bit of history still looms large in St. Denis where there are people alive who still remember it.  One of the caves that played such a role is the so-called Devil's Cave of this book's title. It is also integral to the mystery which Bruno Courrèges, Chief of Police of St. Denis, must try to solve. The case begins on a fine spring day as the local church choir is practicing for its Easter concert. Bruno is observing and enjoying the practice when he...

I decided to take a break from my serious reading to catch up with Chief of Police Bruno  Courrèges from the idyllic village of St. Denis in the Dordogne region of France. This is the fourth entry in the popular series. Billed as mysteries, the books are as much travelogs and gourmet cookbooks. Bruno is an accomplished chef who enjoys cooking for his friends and promoting the famous cuisine of the region. One of the staples of that cuisine is foie gras and that plays an important role in this story. First, one has to be aware that Chief of Police Bruno tries never to arrest anybody. He always tries to mediate disputes which arise within his jurisdiction, and that is mainly the kind of action which the police get there. Petty disputes. In this book, the dispute is between the local farmers who produce the birds for foie gras and animal rights activists, including PETA. There is also a new and inexperienced magistrate assigned to the area and she is a vegetarian and is hostile to the...

A trip to the rural countryside of southwestern France seemed like a good option for a few summer days' read. Martin Walker's "Bruno, Chief of Police" series has been dependably entertaining, so I picked up the next book in the series and immersed myself in the culture and concerns of the little town of Saint-Denis where men are manly, women are womanly, and children are mostly offstage except when their presence is required for dramatic effect. The life of Saint-Denis revolves around wine, cooking, rugby, affairs of the heart, cheese, and truffles. Oh, and politics. Politics seems at the heart of most activities in the community. We soon learn in Black Diamond that all is not wine and truffles in the lives of the citizens of the town. Tensions have arisen over immigrants coming into the area, some of whom have entered illegally, aided by human smugglers.  As the story develops, we learn that the Chinese are at the center of the smuggling operation and they are clash...

The Dark Vineyard: A Novel of the French Countryside by Martin Walker My rating: 3 of 5 stars I was recently introduced to this series, set in the Dordogne section of France in the sleepy little village of Saint-Denis, and I enjoyed the first book in the series so much that I was eager to move on to the second. The Dark Vineyard again features Benoît (Bruno) Courrèges, chief of police of Saint-Denis, but also a talented cook and aficionado of good wines who delights in entertaining his many friends with wonderful food and wine from local sources. Some of my favorite parts of the book are descriptions of the foods he and others serve. Bruno is an unusual policeman who is very protective of the people of his community and does not like arresting people, so he is always looking for solutions that do not involve clapping malefactors in handcuffs. For the most part, he succeeds. He is called to the scene of a big fire at a local agricultural research station that had been involved in work...

Bruno, Chief of Police: A Novel of the French Countryside by Martin Walker My rating: 4 of 5 stars Benoit Courreges, known to everyone as Bruno, is the chief of police in the small village of St. Denis in the Dordogne region of southwestern France. He's a unique kind of policeman. He has a gun but he keeps it locked away. He makes every possible effort not to arrest people, preferring reasoning with them and sometimes turning a blind eye to minor infringements. His main challenge as a policeman seems to be protecting the vendors at the village market from the EU health and safety inspectors who are charged with ensuring that regulations are followed and who are authorized to hand out fines to those who attempt to circumvent the rules. Bruno is an orphan who found his calling as a soldier serving with United Nations forces in Bosnia. Coming home, he had a mentor in one of his former commanders in Bosnia and through the efforts of that man, now the mayor of the town, Bruno became ch...