A classic and thoroughly enjoyable Bruno book…
I was happy to see that the latest book in Martin Walker’s Bruno series, A Grave in the Woods, was on sale at Kindle UK for a very nice price while I was on a business trip there a few days ago. And what’s even more amusing and amazing is that it was on sale in the UK before it is even out in the US or Canada! So I snapped it up and read the whole thing on the plane home the very next day.
A Grave in the Woods is a classic Bruno book, with three or four storylines going on simultaneously that somehow all get resolved in the end. And although Bruno is supposedly still recovering from a gunshot wound to his shoulder (from the previous book), he’s involved in everything. There’s the new British couple in town, trying to renovate/convert an old hotel into a cooking school, and on whose property the long-abandoned titular “grave in the woods” is found. Since it contains the remains of two female German soldiers and one male Italian officer from WWII, and since former enemies Germany and Italy are now allies, that blows up into an international brouhaha rather quickly. Then there’s the American archaeologist who hopes to set up specialized tours of American-related sites in the Périgord, but whose ex-husband may not yet be totally out of the picture. Abby probably didn’t imagine being asked to use her skills to help examine a relatively recent (for her) grave but agrees to help out. Just to add to the mix, there’s also the new executive administrator, Mademoiselle Cantagnac, who has taken over Bruno’s office while he was out on medical leave, and seems to be equal parts helpful, annoying, competent, and well-connected. She has a self-described “black-belt in office judo” – but Bruno’s beloved hound, Balzac, likes her. And finally, looming over everything is the impact of climate change, exemplified in A Grave in the Woods by unusually heavy summer rains and imminent flooding.
As always in the Bruno series, one needs to suspend disbelief just a little teeny tiny bit, to be able to imagine that so many international visitors and storylines really would intersect in such a small town in la France profonde. But by now, seventeen books in, that feels rather normal, and the rest of the book is totally enjoyable: the food, Bruno’s friends, the food, Balzac, the food, the French countryside, the food, Walker’s sharp plotting and writing – and oh, did I mention the food? So all-in-all, very much a book to read and enjoy!
Buy (out now in the UK, Sept 24 in the US and Canada): Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon Canada | Kobo US | Kobo UK | Kobo Canada
See my review of the fifteenth Bruno book, To Kill a Troubadour, here.