Black Diamond
A Mystery of the French Countryside
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- USD 5.99
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- USD 5.99
Descripción editorial
The third installment in thed elightful, internationally acclaimed series featuring Chief of Police Bruno.
Something dangerous is afoot in St. Denis. In the space of a few weeks, the normally sleepy village sees attacks on Vietnamese vendors, arson at a local Asian restaurant, subpar truffles from China smuggled into outgoing shipments at a nearby market—all of it threatening the Dordogne’s truffle trade, worth millions of dollars each year, and all of it spelling trouble for Benoît “Bruno” Courrèges, master chef, devoted oenophile, and, most important, beloved chief of police. When one of his hunting partners, a noted truffle expert, is murdered, Bruno’s investigation into the murky events unfolding around St. Denis becomes infinitely more complicated. His friend wasn’t just a connoisseur of French delicacies, he was a former high-profile intelligence agent—and someone wanted him dead.
As the strange crimes continue, Bruno’s detective work takes him from sunlit markets to dim cafés, from luxurious feasts to tense negotiations—from all of the paradisial pleasures of the region to its shadowy underworld—and reunites him with a lost love, an ambitious policewoman also assigned to the case. Filled with an abundance of food and wine (including, bien sûr, many, many truffles) and a soupçon of romance, Black Diamond is a deliciously entertaining concoction that delivers all the complexity and delights of the Dordogne itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gallic charm suffuses Walker's third mystery of the French countryside (after 2010's The Dark Vineyard). Bruno Courr ges, the engaging do-gooder police chief of St. Denis in the P rigord 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 m lange with the multimillion-dollar truffle trade and the rowdy Green threat to St. Denis's traditional way of life, adding savory soup ons 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 P rigord" makes every morsel of this cozy cum crime novel a savory delight.