Black Diamond

Starred review from June 27, 2011
Gallic charm suffuses Walker's third mystery of the French countryside (after 2010's The Dark Vineyard). Bruno Courrèges, the engaging do-gooder police chief of St. Denis in the Périgord region, likes to hunt for truffles with his basset hound, Gigi, and his mentor, Hercule, a retired intelligence agent with ties to Southeast Asia. Hercule's savage murder thrusts Bruno into a boiling conflict between France's Vietnamese refugees and the Chinese mob now rapidly surpassing them in France's underworld. Walker deftly seasons this complicated criminal mélange with the multimillion-dollar truffle trade and the rowdy Green threat to St. Denis's traditional way of life, adding savory soupçons of Bruno's romances past (Isabelle of the Police Nationale), present (exotically English Pamela), and possibly future (needy single mother and research chemist Florence). Like the aroma of amateur chef Bruno's venison stew, which virtually leaps off the pages, Walker's unmistakable affection for the "enchanting Périgord" makes every morsel of this cozyâcumâcrime novel a savory delight.

August 15, 2011

A paean to the truffle.

When Hercule Vendrot is murdered while hunting truffles in the Dordogne, his death comes under the purview of his friend and fellow enthusiast of the melanosporum (black diamond truffle) Bruno Courreges. Vendrot had warned Bruno, Chief of Police of the village of St. Denis, that there were shenanigans going on in the Ste. Alvere truffle market. The troubles had escalated from price-fixing to the ransacking of a Vietnamese stall, the firebombing of a Chinese restaurant and full-scale Asian warfare, with Chinese and Vietnamese gangs battling each other for control of the valuable truffle market. Furthermore, both Guillaume Pons and his father, truffle dealers, are vying to become mayor, and the Communists, the Socialists and the Greens are taking sides to determine the outcome. More complications arise when it appears that Vendrot's past includes a stint supervising governmental torture, assassinations and upheaval during the Vietnam era. His will lists his Vietnamese daughter as one of his heirs, if only she can be found. Bruno's love life takes a turn for the worse when an English ex-pat becomes enamored of Guillaume, but he finds solace in preparing a venison casserole and creme brulee with truffles for Vendrot's wake, providing a soothing respite before he's tossed back into a mess that includes more arson, a double murder, illegals scurrying hither and yon and Vendrot's memoirs revealing Algerian treachery.

The meat-and-potatoes political thriller is supplemented and upstaged by a glorious foodie's delight, from an author who knows his way around the French passions (The Dark Vineyard, 2010, etc.).

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

August 1, 2011
Murder and misdeeds keep French policeman Bruno Courreges on his toes in this third installment in Walker's consistently charming series. This time around, Officer Courreges, the only law-enforcement presence in the idyllic French village of St. Denis, investigates suspicious transactions at the truffle market in nearby Perigord, a series of violent attacks on local Vietnamese vendors, and the brutal murder of a longtime friend. With all this chaos, there's little room for Bruno to relish life's extracurriculars: cooking, hunting, and spending time with his quirky English girlfriend. The investigation of his comrade's untimely demise brings Bruno face-to-face with unsavory facts from France's colonial history, namely the country's involvement in Vietnam. (It also finds him dangerously close to a comely old flame.) Poor Bruno can't seem to catch a break: even the truffle case mushrooms into something much larger than anticipated. Bruno Courreges may be a small-town cop, but he's anything but small-minded. Walker, editor-in-chief emeritus and international-affairs columnist at United Press International, has created a character who's endearingly human and worldly wise.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)