Why a Booktrail?
2000s: From Wine and Truffles to the Dordogne of Foie Gras
The Crowded Grave (Bruno Courrèges 4)
What you need to know before your trail
Life in the Dordogne region of France isn’t all wine and truffles you know, or quiet days sitting in one of the local cafes. There’s plenty going on underneath the surface in the fictional town of St Denis.
A local archaeological team looking for Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal remains turns up a corpse with a watch on its wrist and a bullet in its head, so Bruno, the local policeman suddenly gets very interested indeed.
Meanwhile,a new magistrate is wanting to make his mark, there is a series of attacks by animal rights activists on local foie gras producers, and a nearby summit between France and Spain about to take place.
Suddenly St Denis is at the centre of some very dodgy dealings..
Travel Guide
St Denis – might seem a place to enjoy wine, truffles and foie gras, but there is a lot more than meets the eye in this idyllic setting. Murder for one and a turf war between terrorists for another. This case cent
res around Europe’s dark history of terrorist attacks and the local chateau looks over an historical summit only to be threatened by Basque separatists. To make matters worse the small town, where the population is around the 3000 mark suddenly becomes full of people, visitors to the conferences and the town itself. Outsiders to St Denis in this case are suspected.
The inclusion of the archaeological dig where the body doesn’t seem as old as it should makes for a range of crimes and cultural situations together with the gastro knowledge that Bruno is famous for, and this is a innocent at first but then very dark look at an idyllic area in the Dordogne as well as the underbelly that surrounds it.
Dordogne is in real life, the site of some prehistoric caves and is famous for this kind of dig so this novel really illustrates the culture as well as the history of the region. Just don’t read on an empty stomach.
Streetview Maps
Dordogne - The Foie Gras museum and marketplace
Perigeaux - the cathedral
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information:
Back to ResultsWhere Next?
