Another Sun

Cassandra Campbell's narration masterfully plumbs layers of local culture in Williams's story of injustice on the French island of Guadeloupe. Soft-spoken yet determined Juge d'Instruction Anne Marie Laveaud, who is from Algeria, confronts matrimonial and judicial barriers in her investigation of a murder and an improbable suicide while juggling childcare and a wandering spouse. She also worries that she may have been cursed. Campbell's ability to voice the story's social hierarchy and undercurrents of hostility and fear makes for an irresistible performance. She also handles the variety of island accents well. Williams's depiction of a tangled judicial system and colonial power struggles is delivered with clarity and beguiling atmosphere. D.P.D. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

February 25, 2013
After Big Italy (1996) and four earlier mysteries featuring Italian policeman Piero Trotti, Williams delivers a saga of dying French colonialism in 1980 Guadeloupe—a story as convoluted as the racial strains afflicting the island’s diverse, contentious population. French-Algerian judge Anne Marie Laveaud must evaluate the evidence against 83-year-old Hégésippe Bray in the shooting death of Raymond Calais, a wealthy “Béké” (a descendant of the original French colonists). Laveaud, who resists temptation and pressure to close her investigation, finds herself caught up in the welter of relations among the island’s “negros, mulattos, Indians, whites,” particularly the Békés, who make up the bulk of the business people and landowners. At issue are lucrative French subsidies and the potentially violent actions of the Guadeloupe independence movement. Laveaud, despite a strong sense of justice, is buffeted endlessly by the strong winds of change that engulf one mere murder, in this drawn-out tapestry of colonial misrule.