The children return A Bruno, Chief of Police novel

Review by New York Times Review

STARRING IN A Jeffery Deaver thriller isn't all it's cracked up to be. Despite their sterling reputations, his sleuths are in constant danger of being outclassed by their preternaturally cunning adversaries. This is what happens in SOLITUDE CREEK (Grand Central, $28) when Kathryn Dance, an agent with the California Bureau of Investigation, takes on Antioch March, a newfangled killer who likes to scare people into causing their own deaths. "He plays with perceptions, sensations, panic," Dance discovers, leaving the actual killing to his victims themselves. A small, contained fire outside the Solitude Creek roadhouse, a tractor-trailer blocking the exit doors and a single phone call to raise the false alarm - that's all it takes for 200 people to turn on one another in an "animal frenzy" to get out of the club. Marveling at the deadly efficiency of his own work, the man who caused this chaos reflects on how "people could erase a million years of evolution in seconds." This crafty fiend is partial to witty "event" homicides like the book party at the Bay View hall that he orchestrates into a scene of mass hysteria, with guests crashing through windows and hurling themselves into the sea. But he'll also indulge in more modest entertainments, finding a nice viewing spot on a cliff at Monterey Bay and waiting for unwary tourists to venture too far out on the rocks, only to be swept away by a churning wave. Dance manages to deflect some of March's homicidal ambitions, but although he calls her "the Great Strategist," her tactics are nowhere near as ingenious (or as droll) as his own machinations. While Dance may not be able to compete with a flamboyant showoff like March, she's excellent as the calm but constantly moving right hand that Deaver uses to distract us from what his busy left hand is doing. Applying classic principles of indirection, he gives her an important organized-crime case to keep track of, along with single-mother headaches caused by her 10-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son, who have picked this moment to act out their growing pains. Mom needs all her wits about her right now if she hopes to foil one of Deaver's most diabolical villains. JUST WHEN YOU think you've got her all figured out, Joyce Carol Oates sneaks up from behind and confounds you yet again. She does it with a wicked flourish in JACK OF SPADES (Mysterious Press, $24), a "tale of suspense" written in the voice of Andrew J. Rush, an author of "best-selling mystery-suspense novels with a touch of the macabre," who is proud to be known as "the gentleman's Stephen King." Oates gives him a nice wife, a nice family, a nice house in the New Jersey suburbs and the carefully modulated accents of an arrogant stuffed shirt. That changes drastically when he speaks in the more assertive voice of his pseudonymous alter ego, Jack of Spades, who furtively writes "cruder, more visceral, more frankly horrific" potboilers that earn little money and attract an unstable fan base, but gratify a deeply felt need. Oates writes sparingly about the trauma that gave birth to the now rampaging Jack. It's only when Rush is sued for plagiarism by an unknown author that his repressed guilt flares up - irrational, no doubt, but not unfamiliar to writers who "steal" the identities of living people as they give birth to characters of their own creation, including monsters like Jack. A COZY VILLAGE mystery needn't be quaint, and in his blissful novels about Bruno Courrèges, the police chief in the provincial French town of St. Denis, in the Dordogne, Martin Walker usually manages to balance the idyllic charms of his fictional village with substantive issues of concern to Bruno's neighbors. But he seems to have lost that sense of balance in THE CHILDREN RETURN (Knopf, $24.95), with an overstuffed political plot about killers from a radical mosque in Toulouse sent to find "the Engineer," an autistic local Muslim boy with a talent for bomb making. That should be enough excitement for his little town, but Walker also digs into the history of Vichy France for a subplot about Jewish children given sanctuary in St. Denis during World War II. It's time for the grape harvest in this lush valley, but Bruno is far too busy chasing terrorists to devote much time to food and drink and the troubled history of this beautiful region. THE NECESSARY DEATH OF LEWIS WINTER (Mulholland, paper, $15), the first book in Malcolm Mackay's brutal but elegantly constructed Glasgow Trilogy, features a gifted young hit man named Calum MacLean, who is hired by a gangland boss to fill in while his main gunman, Frank MacLeod, recovers from hip replacement surgery. Frank is on his feet again in the second book, how a gunman says GOODBYE (Mulholland, paper, $15), and very happy to be working again. ("Sunshine retirement is for other people. He wants the rain of Glasgow. The tension of the job. The thrill of it. That's his life. Oh, it's so good to be back.") But in THE SUDDEN ARRIVAL OF VIOLENCE (Mulholland, paper, $15) we return to Calum as he weighs the odds of getting out of the profession - alive, that is. Mackay's novels aren't easy to read. He writes short, brisk sentences, blunt and direct, almost clinical. "This isn't a gentleman's club, after all," we're told. "This is business." You either like his affectless style or you don't. I do.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 26, 2015]

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Review by Booklist Review

There is a tension in Walker's Chief Bruno mysteries between the idyllic village of St. Denis in the Dordogne region of France, where Bruno Courrèges serves as chief of police, and the incursions of either home-grown evil or the problems of the outside world. The tension is often lightened by discourses on the local wine, loving accounts of cooking, and to-die-for descriptions of Bruno's rides on horseback through the countryside. The seventh installment is much lighter on the frivolity. A man's body is discovered in the woods where Bruno loves to ride; Bruno recognizes the cruel efficiency of the method as the mark of a special-forces assassin. Bruno also investigates some history here: the Jewish children reportedly sheltered by villagers during WWII. This last bit is interesting but seems tacked on. This is a solid mystery, with the ever-fascinating character of Bruno at the helm, but it's lacking that sense of everyday living in France that makes the series so captivating.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2015 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Recent events make the themes of Walker's thoughtful seventh novel set in France's Périgord (after 2014's The Resistance Man)-terrorism and prejudice-seem eerily prescient. Bruno Courrèges, the St. Denis a police chief, is sickened by the burnt, tortured corpse he discovers and later identifies as Rafiq, an undercover operative investigating extremist infiltration at a nearby mosque. Soon afterward, Bruno learns that local youth Sami Belloumi, an autistic savant, is being transported home from Afghanistan, where he has been forced by jihadists (whom he met through the mosque's school) to engineer lethal terrorist bombs. Sami's return puts St. Denis in the middle of a media firestorm; experts converge to determine his legal treatment even as Rafiq's killers try to silence Sami and Bruno. More thriller than mystery, this installment lacks the warmth of the series' more-local story lines-but Bruno still has time to savor food, wine, and his attraction to a FBI liaison. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Felicity Bryan Associates. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

In his seventh outing (following The Resistance Man), Bruno takes on domestic jihadists and an international tribunal, a former lover, and an affectionate U.S. intelligence officer, all while trying to protect an autistic Muslim named Sami and taking care of his home village of St. Denis in the heart of France's Dordogne region. (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

French police face down jihadis in Dordogne. Ever since his retirement from maintaining world order as a U.N. peacekeeper in Sarajevo, Benot "Bruno" Courreges has served as chief of police in the sleepy rural village where he divides his time between solving routine crimes and making soup from the zucchini, peppers and cucumbers he grows in his garden. But the mutilated corpse found outside St. Denis shocks even a seasoned soldier like Bruno (The Crowded Grave, 2012, etc.). And the murder of Rafiq, an undercover cop, is only the tip of the iceberg. The terrorists who killed him were looking for information that would lead them to Sami Belloumi, an autistic savant who disappeared from a school for special needs students in Toulouse. Sami's on his way back from Afghanistan, where Taliban forces have been capitalizing on his preternatural mechanical skills. But his emaciated frame and the scars on his back suggest that his work building improvised explosive devices may not have been voluntary. With the French, British and American press howling for Sami's hide, Bruno wants to shield the gentle, confused youth and thinks he may have an ally in Pascal Deutz, the psychiatrist sent to debrief him. The U.S. State Department sends its own debriefer: Nancy Sutton, who both charms and terrifies Bruno. Into this heady mix comes Maya Halvy, a rich Israeli widow looking for the Prigord farm that sheltered her and her brother, David, during the war, for a recipe as volatile as Bruno's pot-au-feu. Former journalist Walker's seventh Bruno entry is as prescient as it is terrifying. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1 Benoît Courrèges, chief of police of the small French town of St. Denis and known to everyone as Bruno, had witnessed too much violent death. After twelve years in the French army and eleven as a policeman, he had seen the gruesome effects of artillery shells and machine guns and then of the metal and glass of automobile crashes on the human body. And while he often hoped to forget the impact of a bullet on his own flesh, the sullen ache in his hip with the coming of each winter's damp would remind him of the shot that had sent him tumbling into the snow in the hills above Sarajevo. He'd never forget the brightness of the French tricolore on the sleeve of the medic who worked on him until the helicopter came. Any sight of his country's flag now always brought back to Bruno the red of his blood against the white of the snow and the blue helmet he'd been wearing as a United Nations peacekeeper. But Bruno had never seen anything quite as grim as the sight of the dead man now lying trussed and half-­naked before him. Rain trickled down the corpse's chest and stomach, gleaming on the fresh burn marks where the stubs of his nipples had been. The body was lit by the headlights of Bruno's own van and the large fire engine of St. Denis. Flickering flames on the tires of the car defied the steady rain and the white foam the firemen had used to douse the fire. Breathing through his mouth to avoid the stench of both charred flesh and burning rubber, Bruno checked his watch. Dawn was still an hour away. It was not only the smell that turned his stomach. He felt sickened by a personal sense of outrage. Even though the dead man was a stranger, Bruno felt the manner of this man's death had been a kind of pollution of these woods that he loved and knew so well. He'd never be able to bring his horse or his dog this way without thinking of it. And this atrocity had been carried out by people skilled in the blackest arts of death, professionals who were notoriously hard to bring to justice. But he'd find them. "He's certainly dead and it's obviously murder. Did you see the wound under the chin?" asked Fabiola, whose presence as a doctor was legally required to certify death. Bruno nodded. A stiletto up through the soft skin of the mouth and straight into the brain killed quickly and with very little blood. It was one of the assassin's tricks taught to troops in special forces. "I can't even give you an approximate time of death," she went on. Bruno's good friend Fabiola wore no hat, and rain had plastered streaks of her dark hair across her face, covering the scar on her left cheek. Without makeup her face was pale in the headlights and her eyes enormous. Bruno was suddenly struck by how beautiful Fabiola could be. "Normally I'd use an anal thermometer for body temperature, but he's been badly sodomized and then the fire . . ." "The ground is dry beneath his hips," said Bruno. "The storm broke just after two this morning, so presumably the killers chained him to the tree before then." "You were awake for the storm?" she asked. He nodded. The lightning had not disturbed him but the quick scuttle of Balzac, his basset hound, into his bed had jolted him awake just as the thunder came. Usually barred from his master's bed, the dog was still young enough to be granted a dispensation during the tempests that occasionally gave this valley of the River Vézère a brief taste of an Indian monsoon. Bruno had risen, gone to the window and looked out to see if the rain was hard enough to damage the vineyards now that the harvest was due. After a lapse into a steady drizzle, the rain was coming harder again, the tail end of a storm front that had swept in from the Atlantic. Once Fabiola had finished her examination, Bruno tried to cover the body with a plastic sheet. It protected the charred bones of the feet and lower legs but didn't stretch as far as the man's wrists, still handcuffed around the trunk of a young chestnut tree. The poor devil would have to stay that way, arms stretched out behind his head, his legs staked apart and his back arched like some medieval torture victim, until the forensics team arrived from Périgueux with its cameras and checklists. "Do you think he was killed before the fire burned his feet away?" Fabiola's voice sounded forced as she tried to control it. Bruno shrugged, a gesture that turned into a shudder as he thought about it. "That's more your expertise than mine. I don't know how you'd tell." "The autopsy will confirm it. After death the heart stops pumping blood." Bruno suspected the feet had been burned deliberately before the car was set on fire. The blaze might have scorched the legs but it could hardly have devoured them. He guessed the killers had poured gasoline onto his feet. The only time Bruno had heard of that being done was in the Algerian War. It was a cruel joke of the rebels, who called the white colonists on their land the pieds-­noirs, the "black feet," after the black boots the French troops had worn when they first conquered the country in 1830. "We'll give you black feet," they taunted the French prisoners as they poured the gasoline. He'd been told that by Hercule, an old friend, now dead, who had served in the vicious conflict France had fought in vain to keep Algeria and its oil. "No identification?" Fabiola asked. "I'd say North African heritage with that hair and the olive skin." "He has nothing on him, and the registration plates were removed from the car." Bruno had taken the vehicle identification number from the engine block, but he didn't expect any feedback until much later in the day. Fabiola was staring at him, expecting him to say more. "All we know is that Serge was getting up for the cows and saw the explosion in the woods. He called the pompiers just after four. You might as well go back to bed, since I'm stuck here until the forensics team arrives." Bruno yawned and stretched. It had been a broken night, his phone ringing with its special emergency tone waking him before midnight. Then he had dozed, expecting to be called again, until the storm had woken his dog. He'd dozed again, Balzac tucked in against his shoulder, until Albert had called him to report the fire in the woods. At least the storm had stopped it from spreading. Like most of the rest of southern France, the département had recently issued a forest fire alert after the dry summer. "It's too late to go back to bed, and I wouldn't sleep, not thinking about this." Fabiola gestured with her chin at the plastic-­covered corpse. "I'll go back and shower and put some coffee on. Feel free to come and have a cup once you can get away." "Thanks, but it won't be for a while. I might have to leave the horses to you this morning." "Poor Bruno. Nobody should have to see scenes like this. If you need something to help you sleep . . ." He smiled his thanks but shook his head. It was thoughts about women and his confused love life that kept him awake some nights, not memories of war and corpses. Fabiola quickly kissed his cheek and then briefly took shelter with the pompiers in the cab of the fire engine to sign the certificate of death before heading home. The burned-­out car was on a rough gravel path about a hundred meters from a minor road, just at the entrance to the commune's old garbage dump. It had been closed since the building of the modern déchetterie, where all refuse had to be sorted into different containers. The dead man lay a few meters from his charred vehicle. The car had been stopped just beyond the entrance to the dump, beside a pile of logs. Bruno raised one end of the topmost log to assess its weight; it was at least fifty kilos. He could lift it, but he couldn't carry it far. Four charred logs lay on the gravel path behind and beneath the burned-­out car. Bruno guessed the driver had been lured onto this side road and then found himself unable to reverse because somebody pretty strong had been waiting to toss thick logs behind his wheels. But why had the driver stopped? Bruno walked on up the slope and around a sharp bend, and his flashlight picked out some broken twigs and crushed grass. He saw tire tracks; a second car had been parked here, blocking the way. It could have been waiting, its driver then switching on the headlights to force the oncoming car to stop. Then an accomplice could have used the logs to immobilize it. He'd be looking for at least two men, and forensics might get something from the tracks. The spread between those marks looked too wide for a car. He went back to his vehicle for a metallic tape measure and recorded a width of one meter thirty in his notebook. He'd have to check this against the width of various types of truck when he got back to his office. He loosened the hood of his anorak to make room by his ear for his phone and punched in the speed-­dial number for the brigadier, an important official from the Ministry of the Interior who had given him the phone during a previous case. It was supposed to be secure from wiretaps and it rang with a special tone when someone else on the brigadier's private network was calling. That had been the tone that had woken him before midnight. The caller had identified himself only as Rafiq and said he was coming onto Bruno's territory and might need support. He'd said he would call again, but hadn't. "Duty officer," came the voice in Bruno's ear. Bruno identified himself, described the call from Rafiq and reported the death and the evidence of ambush and torture. "It may be Rafiq," he said, stooping to protect his notebook from the rain and read out the vehicle identification number. "If that's Rafiq's car there's no sign of his phone. It could be compromised." "We'll check and call you back." Bruno began to give his location and was interrupted. "We know where you are. With that phone your GPS coordinates come up on my screen. Have any other police officers been alerted?" "Commissaire Jalipeau, chief detective for the département," Bruno said. He had pondered calling the gendarmes, but J-J's team had the expertise and the forensics lab. And the call from Rafiq on the special line had made him cautious. Bruno, employed by the town of St. Denis, got on well with the local gendarmes, but J-J, like many detectives of the Police Nationale, tended to see them mainly as traffic cops. "Good, keep it that way." The duty officer ended the call. Bruno trudged back through sodden leaves toward the fire engine. Fabiola's car was already gone, but the pompiers were happy to stay, warm and dry in their cab and drinking coffee from a thermos. Bruno was just finishing the cup they gave him when his phone rang again. "It's me," came the voice of J-J. "We're just coming into St. Denis. Can you guide us to the place? I can't make this damn GPS work and I don't want to have to ask the gendarmes." Bruno gave directions and told him to watch for the lights of the fire engine. He went to tell the pompiers they could go home soon, that the police were on their way. Would French policing be any more efficient if they were all one service, he wondered, or at least if they could overcome the traditional rivalries and learn to work together? His phone buzzed again with the special tone, and this time it was the brigadier. Excerpted from The Children Return by Martin Walker All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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