Showing results by author "Martin Walker" in All Categories

A prolific journalist, Martin Walker has crafted a mystery series that deftly blends the stylings of Peter Mayle and Alexander McCall Smith. Chief Bruno Courreges loves life in his small French village. One day his idyll is disturbed when a local research station for genetically modified crops is burned down. An enclave of environmentalists seems to be the most likely culprit, but soon Bruno uncovers evidence that makes the case infinitely more complicated.

It is summer in St Denis and Bruno is busy organising the annual village concert. He's hired a local Périgord folk group, Les Troubadours, to perform their latest hit 'A Song for Catalonia'. But when the song unexpectedly goes viral, the Spanish government, clamping down on the Catalonian bid for independence, bans Les Troubadours from performing it. The timing couldn't be worse, and Bruno finds himself under yet more pressure when a specialist sniper's bullet is found in a wrecked car near Bergerac.

The event of the Périgord tourist season is to be the re-enactment of the liberation of the historic town of Sarlat from the English in 1370. But it all goes wrong when the man playing the part of the French general is almost killed in the heat of the action. The immediate question for chief of police Bruno Courrèges is was this an accident - or deliberate? The stakes rise when Bruno learns that the man, Kerquelin, was running Frenchelon, the secret French electronic intelligence base nearby, after being recruited from a brilliant Silicon Valley career.

Just before dawn one late-summer morning, Captain Bruno Courrèges is roused from sleep by the wail of the town siren atop the Mairie, summoning the volunteer firemen of St Denis. Bruno, the only policeman in the small Périgord town, follows the fire engines towards the site of a large barn, now engulfed in flames, the surrounding fields ablaze. Everything points to arson. A Californian wine maker is planning to buy up half the valley to create a huge wine-producing operation.

St Denis may be picturesque and sleepy, but it has more than its fair share of murder and mystery, as Bruno knows all too well. When Bruno is invited to the 90th birthday of a powerful local patriarch - a war hero with high-level political connections in France, Russia and Israel - he encounters a family with more secrets than even he had imagined.

Bruno Courrèges, einziger Polizist, Gourmet, Sporttrainer und begehrtester Junggeselle von Saint-Denis - wird an den Tatort eines Mordes gerufen. Ein Kriegsveteran ist tot aufgefunden worden, gefesselt und mit einem in die Brust eingeritzten Zeichen. Hinweise fehlen. Die eingeschalteten Polizeibehörden wollen Bruno von den Ermittlungen ausschließen. Doch dieser nutzt seine Ortskenntnisse und Beziehungen, ermittelt auf eigene Faust und deckt die in der Zeit der deutschen Besatzung wurzelnden Ursachen des Verbrechens auf.

In the small town of St Denis, Bruno, can't get a moment's rest. Some rare bank notes have come to light that may have links to the legendary Neuvic train robbery in 1944. The investigation is fraught with issues. Bruno is also dealing with a wave of local burglaries, which have brought his old flame, Isabelle - and their complicated history - back to the town.

Following the funeral of a local farmer, Bruno gets a phone call from his son. He tells Bruno that before his father's sudden death, he had signed over his property to an insurance company in return for a subscription to a luxury retirement home. Bruno discovers that both the retirement home and the insurance company are scams with links to a Russian oligarch whose dealings are already being tracked by the French police.

Bruno, now Chief of Police for the whole Vézère valley, has an unusual challenge to rise to: teaching at his friend Pamela's new cookery school. It is a daunting prospect - the disappearance of one of the school's pupils almost serves as a welcome distraction. When the woman's body is discovered in one half of a double homicide, the evidence points to something far out of the ordinary. The other murder victim is a man, covered in combat scars and with a false passport. Investigations reveal a list of enemies as long as Bruno's arm.

Bruno, Chief of Police in the charming French town of St Denis, is already busy with a case when the body of an undercover French Muslim cop is found in the woods, a man who called Bruno for help only hours earlier. But Bruno's sometime boss and rival, the Brigadier, doesn't see this investigation as a priority - there are bigger issues at stake. Bruno has other ideas. Meanwhile, a Muslim youth named Sami turns up at a French army base in Afghanistan hoping to get home to St Denis. One of Bruno's old army comrades helps to smuggle Sami back to France, but the FBI aren't far behind.

It is springtime France's Périgord, a time of beauty and calm. But not for Bruno, chief of police of the small town of St Denis. A woman's body has been found on a boat, bearing signs of a black magic ritual. Bruno has too much on his plate as it is - mediating a domestic abuse case that needs careful handling and a dodgy local development proposal that seems just too good to be true.

Bruno Courreges is chief of police of the lovely town of St Denis in the Dordogne. His main wish is to keep the local people safe and his town free from crime. But crime has a way of finding its way to him. For 30 years, Bruno's boss, chief of detectives Jalipeau, known as J-J, has been obsessed with his first case. It was never solved and Bruno knows that this failure continues to haunt J-J. A young male body was found in the woods near St Denis and never identified. For all these years, J-J has kept the skull as a reminder. He calls him 'Oscar'.

In vino veritas? Ja, aber manchmal ist die Wahrheit gut versteckt....

Life in south-west rural France is not the sleepy idyll you might suppose. Local duck and goose farms are being attacked by animal rights protestors attempting to halt the production of foie gras. A senior policeman has been shot by terrorists believed to be the Basque Separatists of ETA. And if that weren’t enough, a group of students have just unearthed a ‘modern’ skeleton during a dig at one of the ancient sites of this famous region and home to prehistoric man - a dig that has brought an influx of foreigners to the Dordogne.

The victim carries no identification and her fingerprints are not known to the French Police or Interpol.The only clue to the woman's identity is that her dentistry looks American, but Bruno's inquiries at local hotels and gites yield no trace of a missing foreign woman. The chateau of Commarque, begun in the 11th century, was founded by a Bishop of Sarlat and entrusted to the Knights Templar. In the rocks beneath it are caves.

France’s Périgord region is the home of the black truffle and at five thousand euros a kilo, the exquisite ‘Black Diamond’ is a treasured local asset. When reports come in that this unique delicacy is being adulterated with a cheaper Chinese version, Captain Bruno Courrèges is asked to investigate the scam. But matters take a much darker turn when a horrific murder occurs, and Bruno has his work cut out to find the connection between present crimes and long-buried ones that are linked to France’s colonial past.

Bruno im Sondereinsatz: Eine Gruppe alter Freunde, die sich aus dem Silicon Valley kennen, trifft sich alljährlich zu einer Urlaubswoche, diesmal im wunderschönen, luxuriösen Château de Rouffillac. Doch im Vorfeld wird einer von ihnen, Brice Kerquelin, Opfer eines mysteriösen »Unfalls«, und Bruno wird zum Schutz der kleinen Runde abgeordnet. Aber nicht nur sein Scharfsinn, sondern auch seine Kochkünste sind gefragt: In der Abgeschiedenheit des Schlosses wappnet er sich gegen Übergriffe und sorgt mit Estragonhühnchen und Tarte tatin fürs leibliche Wohl.

Bruno steckt mitten in den Vorbereitungen für das alljährliche Konzert in Saint-Denis – die Folkband Les Troubadours soll auftreten, die mit ihrem neuesten Hit "A Song for Catalonia" gerade in Spanien für Zündstoff sorgt. Hinweise auf einen geplanten Mordanschlag werden laut. Doch Bruno hat auch anderweitig alle Hände voll zu tun: Er ist zuständig für das Buffet des Tennisturniers, ein Wildschwein wird über offenem Feuer gebraten, es wird gefeiert und geschlemmt.

A missing art student. An international investigation. A secret that will shatter Bruno's charming village of St Denis. A rich American art student is found dead at the bottom of a well in an ancient hilltop castle. The young woman, Claudia, had been working in the archives of an eminent French art historian, a crippled Resistance war hero, at his art-filled chateau.

Martin Walkers Romane spielen im geschichtsträchtigen Périgord mit seinen herrlichen Landschaften und trutzigen Burgen. Von einer dieser Burgen, Commarque, brachen im Mittelalter die Tempelritter zu Kreuz­zügen nach Jerusalem auf. Tausend Jahre später nimmt das einstige Morgenland eine späte Revanche in der Person einer jungen Archäologin, die wild entschlossen scheint, bei den damaligen Eroberern einen sagenumwobenen geraubten Schatz sowie ein politisch höchst explosives altes Dokument zu­tage zu fördern.