The Devil's Cave

June 3, 2013
At the start of Walker’s charming fifth novel featuring Bruno Courrèges, police chief in the French village of St. Denis (after 2012’s The Crowded Grave), reports that a dead naked woman is drifting downstream in a boat on the local river disturb the policeman’s choir practice. Once the vessel is secured, Bruno goes aboard. Along with the corpse, whose belly is marked with a pentagram, he finds a black cockerel, the bird’s severed head, and black candles. Identifying the woman and the cause of her death proves less than straightforward, and the mystery deepens when another person turns up dead. Rumors that the woman, who’s deemed a suicide, was involved in conducting a black mass don’t please the town mayor, who’s not eager for the negative publicity they engender. Bruno, an affable gourmet and dogged investigator, is a winning lead, and Walker perfectly balances developments in his private life with the homicide inquiry. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Felicity Bryan Associates.

July 1, 2013
More trouble in paradise comes to Bruno Courreges in the form of a dead woman who may or may not be involved with a Black Mass--and not just any Black Mass. Despite four earlier brushes with homicide (The Crowded Grave, 2012, etc.), residents of the Perigord village of St. Denis are still prepared to show a healthy interest in a corpse, especially when it's that of an attractive nude floating down the River Vezere in an otherwise deserted punt. Bruno, the chief of police, struggles to pull the little boat ashore. So does handsome visitor Lionel Foucher, though his efforts are rather at cross-purposes with Bruno's. The body, when Dr. Gelletreau finally gets a chance to examine it, can't be identified, but it tells quite a story: its torso marked with a pentagram and its organs showing evidence of high recent alcohol consumption and rough recent sex. The contents of the punt--a sizeable black candle, a decapitated cockerel--tell their own story of a Black Mass. These hints, so scandalous to Father Sentout, are confirmed by further evidence of satanic rites in the Gouffre de Colombac, a cave that's hitherto been a rather innocuous local tourist attraction. It's up to Bruno to trace the links among a man accused of beating his wife and daughter, a suspicious deal to develop a vacation village, and a possible descendant of the notorious royal mistress Madame de Montespan, on whose behalf the first Black Mass was offered 300 years ago. The case is just as complicated as it sounds, although the mystery is more conscientious than surprising. As usual in this series, the high points are Bruno's decorously offstage bouts of sex and his far more titillating meals.

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July 1, 2013

Come back to the Dordogne for the fifth series title (after The Crowded Grave) in Walker's French village procedural. A woman's death has occult overtones.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2013
This is the fifth in the series starring Beno+t Bruno Courr'ges, chief of police in a tiny village in the Dordogne region of France. The French countryside, with its glorious food and wine, provides stark contrast to the dark deeds of the crimes Bruno investigates. For example, when Bruno and his aide go fishing, hoping to discover the source of a victim's body, they take along limes to flavor the trout they catch and fillet on the river bank. This mystery has a very dark basis: a naked woman is seen in a boat floating down the river. The woman has been murdered, with a symbol traced in black on her belly. Black candles and the severed head of a cockerel are found in the boat. Bruno investigates the possible black-magic connection, unearthing rituals that go back to a black mass enacted by a desperate mistress of Louis XIV. There are contemporary tie-ins as well to a real-estate scheme in the area. An enchanting new entry in this solid series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)