Bruno Courreges is back to his old tricks, with the same cast of characters, different conflicts. This time it involves some of the famous French resistance fighters during WW II, their exploits and a sensational story about a robbery of a Nazi train with millions of gold dollars. This story, true or not, allows Walker to explore that period of mostly forgotten French history. Walker fills his novel with lots of trappings around the crimes, this time the death of a French Resistance fighter, the burglary of a British spy master and the death of an antiques dealer. I know they don't seem to have much to do with each other but Walker weaves a tangled web, and we discover how they seem to fit, if not perfectly. Much of the novel is taking up with a search for the resistance fighter's grandson, also the lover of the antiques dealer and a key element in a case Bruno investigated ten years ago without a satisfactory outcome. Confusing? In between his investigations, Bruno, an oenophile, loves to cook sumptuous meals for his friends and colleagues, drops scraps of food for his puppy Balzac, rides horses across the fields of his good friend Pamela's farm and beds her when it fits their moods.
Half the fun of his novels, no, more than half the fun is the life of Bruno outside his life as a police chief. It makes anyone want to visit the Dordogne. Only at the end does sadness enter the novel as his former girl friend, Isabelle, confesses she rejected the idea of marriage to Bruno, aborted a child because she did not to damage her career. Bruno, in all his novels, longs for a life of domesticity, with a wife and child and her confession wounds him to the heart.
We read Walker's books as much for Bruno's joie de vivre, the good life in St. Denis , as for the investigations which seem, at times, vehicles for Walker to talk about life in St. Denis. I don't mind.
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