{"id":11083,"date":"2024-07-29T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-29T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11083"},"modified":"2024-07-28T18:36:34","modified_gmt":"2024-07-28T22:36:34","slug":"another-taste-of-france-bruno-chief-of-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11083","title":{"rendered":"Another Taste of France: Bruno: Chief of Police"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Now that we\u2019re all Frenchified from watching the Olympics and their stunning opening ceremonies, which showed the Paris at its best, we can take a breath and turn to some of the country\u2019s many other charms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Millions of UK and US readers have basked in the sunny French countryside via the books by the late Peter Mayle, author of 1989\u2019s A Year in Provence<\/em>. If you\u2019re one of them, Martin Walker\u2019s more recently written detective series will transport you to a similar, simpler time and place. A place where a meal is something to be lingered over (and described in mouth-watering detail) and a glass of wine is savored, even if it\u2019s the not-all-that-delicious small batch created by your hillside neighbor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin Walker\u2019s series of seventeen mystery novels, published beginning in 2009, retains the witty, warm-hearted, utterly charming feeling Mayle exemplified. Bruno, Chief of Police<\/em>, is the series opener. The chief\u2019s actual name is Beno\u00eet Courr\u00e8ges, but to everyone, he\u2019s Bruno. His beat is the small town of Saint-Denis and surrounding countryside, located on the V\u00e9z\u00e8re River in the Dordogne\u2014some 450 miles west and a bit north of Provence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bruno uses a cell phone, relies on DNA testing, and uses other up-to-date forensic methods, but his real skill is understanding the psychology and behavior of Saint-Denis\u2019s residents. His understanding of what methods will and will not work in getting to the bottom of crimes committed there is acute. Big-city police authorities and the head of the local gendarmerie are ever convinced they know best how to handle situations that arise. But, faced with Bruno\u2019s local intelligence, they\u2019re usually defeated in a most gratifying, often amusing, way\u2014such as a gendarme\u2019s attempt to arrest a boy for possession of a potato (on market day, no less!), which runs quickly aground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walker weaves significant contemporary concerns into his rosy descriptions of markets, caf\u00e9s and wineries. For example, market day offers the opportunity for rule-obsessed EU inspectors to search out cheeses, p\u00e2t\u00e9s, and meats that, despite new restrictions, continue to be produced and sold just the way the sellers\u2019 parents and grand-parents did. A woman cited for selling eggs without the required date stamp actually buys her eggs at the supermarket, washes off the dates, and packages them up with a bit of straw and (don\u2019t think about it) to sell to tourists as real country eggs. And tourists there are, with all their agendas and cultural mishaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intruding on this idyllic existence is the occasional murder, rare for the area, but perfect for Bruno\u2019s particular skills Some stories\u2019 strong political undertow allows the author to explore residents\u2019 attitudes about immigrants, social cohesion, wartime behavior, and the like, which give the stories considerable weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bruno is more than the town\u2019s chief of police. For one thing, he coaches the town\u2019s children who want to play tennis. He thinks it\u2019s A good way to get to know the next generation, whose members soon will enter the risk-prone years of adolescence. He travels the area\u2019s indifferent roadways to visit farm families, keep tabs on their concerns, making numerous friendships among them. When he needs them, they cooperate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good food too is a preoccupation. Bruno is an excellent, if unfussy cook, and partakes of the best his region has to over, including the truffles found in the woods behind his house. (I\u2019m salivating.) Naturally, he has a loyal basset hound, Gigi, to keep him company and manage his hunting expeditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bottom line: Walker\u2019s mysteries are a pleasant way to spend a few hours. More than that, the investigations he\u2019s designed dig into many facets of rural life as it has been and as it changes. Not all of them are pretty, and the appearance of simplicity is only on the surface. Along the way he introduces you to interesting local characters and captures a few idyllic moments. You\u2019re very likely to want more of both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walker is a former foreign correspondent for The Guardian<\/em>, has written a number of nonfiction historical and political books and lives in France\u2019s P\u00e9rigord region.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Now that we\u2019re all Frenchified from watching the Olympics and their stunning opening ceremonies, which showed the Paris at its best, we can take a breath and turn to some of the country\u2019s many other charms. Millions of UK and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The French countryside, the love of good food and wine--you could forget you're reading a murder mystery and just relax into it! Charming.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61,52,1288,632,126],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character","category-crime","category-culture","category-police","category-reading-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2SL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11086,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11083\/revisions\/11086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}