A Taste for Vengeance: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel

Bruno Courrèges, the police chief of the Dordogne village of St. Denis, goes looking for English tourist Monika Felder after she fails to show up for a cooking class in Walker’s entertaining 11th series mystery (after 2017’s The Templars’ Last Secret). Bruno learns that Monika, who left her husband back in England, was traveling with Patrick McBride, an Irishman with a house in the area. Monika turns up at the house, fatally stabbed in the bathroom; McBride’s body is found hanging from a tree in the nearby woods. What at first appears to be a murder-suicide proves to be a double homicide involving more than one killer and with links to a multimillion-dollar theft in Iraq and the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The efficient Bruno also manages to help one of the women’s rugby players he’s coached since childhood sort out some serious problems, run through some favorite Dordogne recipes while teaching a cooking class, and continue his on-again, off-again romance with a former colleague. Walker’s formula for regional crime fiction still appeals, though this outing’s global elements are something of a stretch. [em]Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Felicity Bryan Associates. (June) [/em]