The Crowded Grave

 The Crowded Grave by Martin Walker is the fourth book in the Bruno, Chief of Police series. Once again, the skillful narrator was Robert Ian MacKenzie. As usual, while focusing on the idyllic St. Denis in France’s Perigord region, which is in a westerly central very rural area of the country, Walker brings in significant outside forces. In this case it was a French-Spanish summit being held there while being threatened by Basque separatists. At the same time, an outside animal rights group was descending on St. Denis because this was the region that produced nearly all of the foie gras that was consumed in France and was exporting that worldwide. They were demonstrating against the force feeding of geese to produce this product. Also, there was the discovery of a prehistoric grave in which a man, woman, and child were found, huddling with one another. There was an archaeological dig going on there, and at this same site, a 20-year-old murder victim was discovered. It was thought he had been involved in the Basque-separatist movement. Walker skillfully moves his protagonist and antagonists in and out of the issues in St. Denis and the world at large.

Bruno continued to be admired by most of the local citizens, and his culinary skills and taste in wines were described in detail. He was a single man who continued to struggle with making a choice among the women who he was seeing. The plot was well developed, and the characters that surrounded Bruno were three-dimensional, and this reader found them to be struggling with their own emotions. In other words, I found myself caring about them. I won’t detail it here, but there is a heart-breaking end to one of the important characters in the series.

In searching for the author in this blog, I found that ECD had previously reviewed a book by Walker. Pointing out one of the differences between the reviewers was that ECD was not drawn to the focus of life in the Perigord, while I (WCD) was enamored by it. ECD reviewed The Coldest Case, the 14^th book in the series. I expect that I’ll eventually read these books in order, so it will be a while until I get to that particular Bruno story.

The Bruno series – my advice is to keep reading.

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