It’s a Mystery: “It’s not important who fires the shot. It’s who pays for the bullet.”
/The Patriarch
He had been honored as a war hero in two countries, with the Grand Cross of the Légion d’Honneur and the gold star and red ribbon of a Hero of the Soviet Union. The first had been presented by his friend Charles de Gaulle and the second by Stalin himself at a glittering ceremony in the Kremlin.
Bruno attends this party steering the wheelchair of the Red Countess, ex-lover of Marco Desaix. Once a great beauty, is a legendary hero of the Resistance and the famous aristocrat Communist, hence the sobriquet. (Bruno saved her from home imprisonment and a debilitating existence exacted by mean-spirited relatives in 2013’s The Devil’s Cave.)
“This must be one of the finest views in the country,” the Red Countess said from her wheelchair….” Marco bought it for a song, you know. I was with him when he first saw this place and decided to buy it. I think it helped that my own château was close by.” She paused, smiling. “Marco was one of my happier affairs. It lasted longer than most…. I met him in Moscow, where he was a star…. Mon Dieu, he was a handsome beast. He still is, in his way.”
Given that she counts among her amours Yves Montand, Camus and Malraux, this is high praise indeed:
Bruno followed her gaze to the double doors leading into the château where the man known across France as the Patriarch was still receiving his guests. …His jaw was still as firm as his handshake, and his sharp brown eyes missed nothing. They had looked curiously at Bruno as he’d first appeared, pushing the wheelchair. But once Bruno was introduced by the Red Countess as the local policeman who had saved her life, the Patriarch’s eyes had crinkled into warm appreciation.
As they wait in the receiving line, Bruno notes how tight the Countess is with the Patriarch’s family. It is a clan of wildly diverse, seductive characters. All go out of their way to pay homage to her.The Patriarch has three children by different wives. First is Yvgeny, his son by a Russian woman in wartime. He’s a painter who lives nearby. His half-sister, Raquelle, is the daughter from his Israeli wife who has lived in Périgord for forty years. A favorite of the Countess, she is one of the artists responsible for the excavation of the region’s historic Lascaux cave paintings. Then there is his youngest son, Victor, a former pilot like his father, who runs the family vineyard. He has a very attractive wife, Madeleine, who the Countess wryly notes is using the party to advance her political career. Their daughter Chantal is a close friend of the Countess’s great granddaughter Marie-Francoise whose life was also saved by Bruno. Their handsome son, Marc, is learning the family business and Marco, according to the Countess, would like to see him marry Marie-Francoise. This causes Bruno to reflect that the days of arranged marriages may be over, but among the current crop of aristocrats the old ways seem to prevail.After a spectacular air show staged by the minister of defense for the birthday boy, Bruno escorts the Countess back to her château. Home, basking in the glow of evening’s events, Bruno walks his basset hound Balzac, feeds his chickens, and tends to his vegetable garden, blissfully unaware that there is a tragedy unfolding at the scene of the party.Just after dawn the next morning Bruno gets a call from the mayor summoning him back to the Patriarch’s château where a death has occurred. The victim is Colonel Gilbert Clamartin, who is laid out on a lounger in one of the rooms. The room is full of people and stinks of booze and vomit. Besides the mayor, there is Dr. Gelletreau who has already signed the death certificate:
“Accidental death,” said the doctor. “Died in the night, dead drunk. No suspicious circumstances.” He sidled up to Bruno and murmured in his ear, “The poor fellow drowned in his own vomit.”That was quick, Bruno thought. Gelletreau usually hemmed and hawed and left his options open.
Also present are Father Sentou who has just performed the last rites and Victor and Madeleine Desaix who, along with the victim, spent the night at the château. It was Victor who found the body. Bruno recognized the dead man, Gilbert, as the drunk who had tried to pull Chantal away at the party and was all but carried out by a servant. It seems that Gilbert had been an old comrade-in-arms of Victor’s. After his flying career ended, he became an air attaché in Moscow during the heady days of Gorbachev and glasnost. It was the Patriarch who smoothed his way by introducing him as a fellow fighter pilot and a close friend of his son. Thanks to Victor, he lived in a small house on the family estate and had the nominal job of cataloging the Patriarch’s archives. According to Victor, he was always a heavy drinker.A thorough search of Gilbert’s house by Bruno, Victor and Madeleine yields little. No will is found.Apparently informally, Victor was his next of kin. His bank statements suggest that his only income was his military pension. What surprises Bruno is how immaculate everything is. Drunks, in his experience are not usually tidy. Also unusual is the lack of a paper trail: absent are letters, notes, bills, address books, all the detritus of modern life. And when questioned the couple shed no light on what Gilbert wanted with their daughter Chantal who, as it turns out, was not even sure he was at all inebriated. Bruno, replaying the scene, thinks Gilbert’s movements were odd but might have been fueled by strong emotions rather than alcohol:
…the way he set his feet, the cock of his head as he pulled Chantal toward him, that now had Bruno wondering…. These weren’t alarm bells, just some faint tinklings that triggered curiosity rather than suspicion.
Then he learns after the fact that the body has been cremated. At a dinner two more party guests confirm that Gilbert didn’t seem to be drinking heavily. The mayor is unusually adamant about the matter being wrapped up with discretion and dispatch. There is the speed with which the death certificate was signed. Alarm bells go off. Bruno ramps up his investigation and uncovers a raft of suspicious coincidences in the Patriarch’s and Gilbert’s Cold War-espionage past. He is almost derailed by a romantic entanglement that leaves him looking vulnerable and foolish. And as he navigates the intricacies of the Patriarch’s family, he exposes secrets that illuminate the dangerous course he is on. The climax is, quite simply, a doozy!Martin Walker’s Bruno novels are as delicious as the world class meals his chief of police whips up and as intoxicating as the wines he serves.
“A BLOODY stolen tractor…. Is this why I put in all those years to Make DI?”“It’s a rural crime,” said DC Doug Wilson, taking his eyes from the road for a moment to flash Annie a quick grin… “And it is an expensive tractor.”
He’s got that right. The tractor is a green Deutz-Fahr Argotron worth at least a hundred K. Beddoes and his wife were away for a week in Mexico and returned to find it missing. A cursory inspection of the garage where it was housed reveals surprisingly lax security. “A kid could have broken into that garage in five seconds,” Annie says in disgust.At about the same time, Terry Gilchrist is walking his dog near a WWI-era airplane hangar on an abandoned airfield. The dog slips under the fence and immediately starts barking and whining. Gilchrist manages, painfully, to get to her and by the light of his mobile discover what’s got her so agitated. There is a large bloodstain dotted with chips of bone and chunks of gray matter on the concrete floor.Detective Superintendent Winsome Jackman is dispatched to the airfield, where she promptly rescues Gilchrist with some bolt cutters and summons a forensic analyst and another colleague, Detective Constable Gerry Masterton, to the site. Meanwhile, Annie and Wilson are headed to Beddoes’ neighbor, Frank Lane, who looks in on Beddoes’ farm while he was away. They’re interested in Lane’s “tearaway son,” as Beddoes described him. Lane is a cantankerous Yorkshireman whose nineteen-year-old son Michael/Mick doesn’t live with him. His wife bolted two years ago and his son is living in a rough housing estate “with some tart.”Annie discovers that Mick Lane was arrested for stealing a car eighteen months ago and taking it for a joyride that resulted in two thousand pounds worth of damage. Because it was his first offense, he got off with community service, supervised by a probation officer. The probation officer tells Annie that Lane is living in a flat on the East Side Estate with a twenty-eight-year-old woman called Alex Preston. She has a four-year-old shoplifting charge on her record and an eight-year-old son called Ian. Annie and Doug visit Alex. She tells them that Lane who she calls Michael has disappeared, gone since yesterday morning and she doesn’t know where to. Seems he got a text from a chum named Morgan Spencer and took off. Alex finds Spencer creepy and full of himself and he has a spider tattoo on his neck. She’s sick with worry and implores them to find Michael.They head for the caravan site where Spencer lives. He’s not there and Rick Campbell in the neighboring caravan, an ex-copper, hasn’t seen him all weekend. Having also learned from Alex that Spencer was in the house removal business, they inquire about his van. Campbell didn’t know he had one, has only seen him on his Yamaha motorbike. Campbell gets his back up when they ask for a look around Spencer’s caravan. He tells them to come back with a warrant.Back at the police station DCI Alan Banks and AC Catherine Gervaise have called a late meeting in the boardroom. Banks is just back from a holiday, and wants a full report from his team. One of the most interesting things to come out of the meeting is the speculation that Beddoes might be more involved. He’d been one of the City boys in the mid-eighties, making huge amounts of money on the stock market when they threw out the rule book. Annie brings up insurance fraud and Banks agrees it’s a distinct possibility. Then there is the fact that John Beddoes wife Patricia and Gervaise are in a book club together. But Gervaise knows nothing about their finances except that they seem reasonably well off. As for Patricia, she likes Kate Atkinson and Khaled Hosseini which elicits some chuckles from the group.As the investigation heats up, Michael Lane remains missing but Morgan Spencer is found brutally murdered. Because the corpse was headless, they identify him by the spider tattoo. Spencer’s death leads the team to the local abattoirs. Scenes that could turn anyone into a vegetarian! The blood stain in the hangar and the stolen tractor are evidence of a much larger conspiracy. The hangar and the airfield turn out to be a trafficking route for everything from stolen farm equipment to livestock, people, and drugs.By the time Banks, in his usual meticulous fashion, pulls all the skeins together, he’s got to confront some frightening revelations. The ins and outs of corporate finagling—money laundering, invisible transfers, hidden accounts, offshore shelters, shell companies—are right up there with murder and stolen goods. And there is a shocker of a climax that will keep you on the edge of your seat.As is usual with Robinson, the characters are fleshed out with fresh insights. There is a delightful flirtation between one of his officers and a “civilian” that turns into something more. There are myriad inventive touches that make for a marvelous read. When DC Doug Wilson takes his hat off he looks like Daniel Radcliffe playing Harry Potter. Robinson gets a lot of mileage out of that.And, of course, Banks wouldn’t be Banks without music. His taste is as eclectic as ever. The novel’s title comes from the PJ Harvey song of the same name. (Look it up, I did.) His son Brian is more successful than ever with his group the Blue Lamps.Banks is the first to admit that he couldn’t have solved any of it without his crack cohorts in crime solving. In the end, they all wind up in a pub celebrating. Banks is getting the first round:
As he waited to be served, he looked back at the table, at his team, deservedly wallowing in the feeling of a job well done…. He cared about them all, he realized.
So do we.
Two weeks. Too late. Those four words were running as a loop in my head…Almost every search and rescue operation has a component that wardens don’t emphasize, at least not at first…. Sometimes people disappear because they’ve met the wrong person on the trail.Samantha and Missy had ventured into a place largely empty of other human beings: a wilderness where cell phones didn’t work and you could scream all night without being heard. There wasn’t a person involved in this search who didn’t share the same dark fears about what might have happened to them.…In recent years, crystal meth had started appearing in Maine…A horror story for twenty-first-century America….Add to that the local creeps who live within spitting distance of the trail—the poachers, predators, smack addicts, recluses, robbers, and Doomsday preppers—and it was a wonder there weren’t more homicides.
Bowditch’s assigned search partner is the legendary Bob “Nonstop” Nissen. He’s an ex-con who got the nickname because for more than two decades he held the record for the fastest thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail—sixty-one days from south to north, carrying his own supplies, without the assistance of another human being. To Bowditch, Nissen is a taciturn pain in the ass who seems to view their assignment less as a search-and-rescue mission and more as a personal competition. But he soldiers on, ignoring Nissen’s “attitude.”The search gets a much needed jolt when Bowditch is joined by Stacy’s father, Charley, who flies his own private Cessna. Charley Stevens was a retired Warden Service pilot who still volunteered whenever another pair of eyes was needed. When Stacy shows up hard on his heels, she is an even more welcome sight, particularly since their romantic getaway had been so abruptly cut short.Samantha and Missy are found in the bottom of a landmark precipice not far from where they were last seen. Their bodies have been ravaged by coyotes. Despite the state of the corpses, neither Stacy nor Bowditch believes that coyotes killed the women. But the suspicion that it was rabid coyotes has already spread like an epidemic. Faced with statewide panic, Maine’s governor places an emergency bounty on every dead coyote, and wildlife officials are tasked with collecting the carcasses. This includes Stacy, who works for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. As the slaughter of untold animals ensues by hunters eager to collect the bounty, Stacy insists the scavengers are being wrongly blamed. She believes a murderer may be hiding at the edge of the Hundred Mile Wilderness and that the two women weren’t his only victims.Then Stacey disappears along the AT and Bowditch goes into high gear as his hunt for answers becomes personal. Following her trail, he is forced to go up against the drug-dealing Dow family, who are dedicated to terrorizing the community. They are a large, evil, violent, ugly inbred clan whose motto might be “don’t knock incest until you’ve tried it.” They are living proof that the most dangerous animals are humans.Paul Doiron adeptly evokes the raw beauty of Maine in this old-fashioned, multilayered mystery. Bowditch, an inveterate rule breaker with a penchant for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, reminds me of Steve Hamilton’s Alex McKnight. The Precipice is a fine addition to a series that vividly portrays backwoods law and order.____Irma Heldman is a veteran publishing executive and book reviewer with a penchant for mysteries. One of her favorite gigs was her magazine column “On the Docket” under the pseudonym O. L. Bailey.
