Bruno: Chief of Police
By Martin Walker
Published 2008
Read Sept 2020
Martin Walker is quite an interesting fellow. He’s currently Senior Director of the Global Business Policy, a private think-tank for CEO’s of major companies, and Editor Emeritus of the United Press International, and Senior Scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for scholars…. among other things. He’s been a journalist, a broadcaster, and historical scholar and he has written widely in various formats.
Fortunately for this reader and fellow Bruno, Chief of Police fans, he finds time to write about Bruno, a policeman who lives in a small village in South France. Bruno, a former solider, has found his piece of heaven in St Denis. He’s built his own house out of an abandoned shepherd’s cottage, he hunts, he owns a dog, he organizes parades and firework displays for the village, he gardens, and he cooks beautiful and simple meals.
He also solves crimes. Martin Walker has given us a series of Bruno books in which the policeman deals with a major crime while tending to the needs of the village and cooking wonderful meals. This NY Times article about Walker will likely engage your interest in Martin Walker and his Bruno series:
In this first installment, Bruno must deal with the murder of a local elderly North African man who had served in the French army during WWII. There is a swastika carved into his chest. He’s paired up with a young policewoman from Paris to delicately investigate this politically charged situation. Walker confronts the reader with some messy details of French history during WWII providing the reader with both some French history, an interesting mystery, and some French culture of the region.
This reader stumbled on this series in a Little Free Library and reported on The Devil’s Cave which is the sixth novel in the series that currently contains sixteen entries. This reader did not find it important to read the two books “out of order” although it might be nice to progress through them in the order written. This reader looks forward to more adventures with Bruno cooking, engaging with the residents of St Denis, and solving crimes.
MarshaReads.com 