I'm reading my way to Bordeaux, trying to get ready for a visit I hope to make to the region sometime soon.
There's a lot to know about Bordeaux, it has centuries, even millenia, of history. Not far from Bordeaux is the Lascaux Cave, where cave paintings believed to be twenty thousand years old have been found.
My dad was a compulsive reader, across a variety of subjects, but mysteries and detective stories were a particular favorite of his. My mom mentioned that, shortly before his death, my dad had been reading his way through Martin Walker's Bruno, Chief of Police series, which are set in the Dordogne region, which runs roughly east from Bordeaux along the Dordogne River.
My dad happened to have just finished The Body in the Castle Well, so I picked up his copy to get a taste for the series.
Walker is primarily a newspaper columnist (he's the US Bureau Chief for The Guardian), and this novel has some of the feel of being written by a journalist. It's well-researched and somewhat encyclopedic, and you get the feeling that Walker seeks to educate you as much as he seeks to entertain you. In this book, we get to learn some art history, and some falconry, and we hear a bit about the ending of French colonialism in Algeria.
With all that history and science tossed in with the detective story, I can see why my dad was very fond of Bruno, Chief of Police.
I'll surely read a few more of Walker's books.
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