Mike Ripley retired from regularly reviewing new crime fiction after more than 32 years (and almost 3,000 reviews) at the critical coal-face. He now restricts himself to the worthy or unusual titles which tempt him out of retirement.
In the bucolic idyll that is life in St Denis, that small French jewel in the crown of the Dordogne, it’s a wonder that police chief Bruno Courrèges has the time to uncover any crime. What with the horse riding, hunting, fishing, organising local rugby teams, walking his dog, listening to medieval music and playing tennis, not to mention the wine tastings and those fabulous lunches (often spent discussing the menu for that evening’s dinner), his days would seem blissfully full.
And surely there can’t be that much crime in such a pastoral paradise, at least not since one Stone Age man clubbed another after an argument over perspective in the cave paintings of Lascaux. Well, there you’d be wrong, as proved by the discovery of A Grave in the Woods, Martin Walker’s seventeenth novel set in the charming environs of his mythical St Denis.
The grave in question contains not one, but three skeletons, which are quickly assessed by a passing archaeologist as belonging to two naked females and an Italian naval officer, their deaths dating from 1944 and due possibly to one of the last actions by the French resistance. As if identifying the bodies and arranging a civic ceremony to honour them along with European neighbours who were once enemies but now were friends (remember those days before Brexit?) wasn’t enough to be going on with, cybercrime raises its ugly head – yes, even in St Denis – as does crypto currency fraud and the obsessions of the estranged husband of the visiting American archaeologist.
Plus, climate change has resulted in the dams and rivers of the Perigord overflowing and in danger of causing widespread flooding.
With all that occurring whilst technically on sick leave recovering from a bullet wound in the shoulder, Bruno hardly has time to cook the occasional shoulder of lamb (in Monbazillac) with a tarte tartin, but somehow he manages. It just goes to show that there is something magical about life (and crime fiction) in the Dordogne and Bruno himself quotes that literary innovator Henry Miller who said
‘France may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men.’
Martin Walker does a splendid job of describing the dreamy richness of life in the Dordogne and making his readers incredibly jealous they are not there.
