Another enjoyable Bruno the Detective novel and in this one, you better read it on a full stomach because if you don't, you will want to rush into the kitchen and make what Bruno and his buddies are having. And, like me, you will want to get a basset hound like Bruno's Balzac. The novel begins with a party to honor the Patriarch, Marco Desaiz, a famous fighter pilot during WWII, one of a few Frenchmen who flew for the Russians against Germany. He is much admired by Bruno, who read about him when he was a boy. Bruno is invited to the party by the Red Countess, who he saved in a previous novel. She was one of the patriarch's many lovers. We also meet Madeleine, Marco's ambitious daughter in law, his son by his Russian mistress, Yevgeny, his grandchildren, and his best friend from the flying days, Gilbert.
Towards the end of the gathering, Bruno is called away because of a tragic car crash, a result of an overpopulation of deer on the property of one of the Green party members, Imogene, a neighbor and friend of Bruno's. This necessitates Bruno making it clear to Imogene that the deer must be culled or she may have to move. This is a minor theme of the story. The next morning, however, Bruno gets called back to the Patriarch's estate because his good friend, Gilbert, has been found dead, from what everyone assumes is alcohol poisoning. By the time Bruno gets there, his death has been pronounced an accident, his body taken away before Bruno can get organized, the body is cremated.
The quickness of all of this peaks Bruno's interest, and the rest of the novel follows his instincts, as he's right to assume there has been foul play, that someone has wanted Gilbert dead. At first, it seems like it might have been his daughter because she inherits over two million euros. But that is soon proven false, and the guilt soon falls on the patriarch himself because of his ties to Russia, the fact that some think he may have been their double agent. This too ends up being a dead end.
Bruno finally settles on the beautiful, ambitious daughter in law of the Patriarch, up for a seat in the government. He only comes to this conclusion after she has seduced him, then sent a rogue to his house to dispatch him with an axe. Bruno fights him off, sends him to jail, and slowly comes to an understanding of why Madeleine wanted Gilbert dead. Gilbert was her daughter's father and if this were made public, she would surely lose the election. Thus, she felt she had to do away with Gilbert.
As in all the stories, Bruno has some love interest. But in this novel, his relationship with Pamela, his neighbor, an expatriate from Scotland, comes to an end as she takes up with Jack Crimson, a retired spy from Great Britain. Both she and Bruno realize it would not work out between them because Bruno wants a family and Pamela definitely does not. So though they part, it hurts Bruno even though he knows it's for the best.
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