Bruno, Chief of Police #01: Death in the Dordogne

- Blurb -

Captain Bruno Courreges goes by the grand title of Chief of Police, though in truth he's the only municipal policeman on staff in the small town of St Denis in the beautiful Perigord region of south west France. He has a gun but never wears it; he has the power to arrest but never uses it. The law in St Denis and the farms and hamlets of its sprawling commune is not necessarily applied as Paris would like it. Bruno sees his job as protecting St Denis from its enemies and these include the capital's bureaucrats and their EU counterparts in Brussels. Today is market day in the ancient town. Inspectors from Brussels have been swooping on France's markets, attempting to enforce EU hygiene rules. The locals call the Brussels' bureaucrats 'Gestapo' and Bruno supports their resistance. What's more, here in what was Vichy France, words like 'Gestapo' and 'resistance' still carry a profound resonance. When the body of an old man, head of an immigrant North African family, is found in his home, eviscerated, the obvious conclusion is that this killing must be racist. Swastikas have been scrawled on the walls. But Bruno isn't convinced and suspects this unusual crime may have its roots in a tortured period of recent French history ' the Second World War. A time of terror and betrayal that set brother against brother, it casts a very long shadow.