Bruno, Chief of Police: A Novel of the French Countryside

 Bruno, Chief of Police is a current day story that quickly ties into a WWII event. Bruno is the protagonist who is the Chief of Police in a small rural village in France. In fact, he’s the only police officer in the village. This is the first in a 21-book series authored by Martin Walker. I chose to get the audiobook format, and the narrator is Robert Ian MacKenzie. Considering all the audiobooks that I’ve consumed, it’s not a small compliment to write that he’s a good as any narrator that I’ve heard, and that includes Tom Hanks in the book The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. It’s an 8-hour, 52-minute listen. This first novel was first published in 2008.

Bruno Courreges is fully enjoying the quiet life he’s living in St. Denis. Previously, he was seriously injured by a sniper during the Balkan War. He had a past love who was killed in the same battle in which he was injured. He arrived in St. Denis as a single young man. He came to know of two men who had been resistance fighters during WWII, but rather than having become great friends, they never acknowledged one another. Then one of them, an Algerian who had fought on behalf of the French resistance in WWII was brutally murdered, and a swastika was carved into the victim’s chest.

As a result of the murder and the investigation that followed, it became apparent that the village was harboring some longstanding secrets and racial prejudices. The murdered man was an Arab, and in France at the current time, there is a growing ultraright movement against all immigrants. Meanwhile, Bruno found himself becoming very attracted to a woman investigator who had been sent from Paris to St. Denis to help with the investigation.

The author provided a cast of the most interesting characters, and Bruno’s ability to interact with a wide variety people turned out to be one of the reasons that I came to like him so much. I’m quite excited to find yet another author with an extensive body of work that I can look forward to. enjoying It’s my plan to find the second book in the series, The Dark Vineyard, and if the second book is as good as the first, then I have a lot of joy coming my way.