Deadly Camargue: A Provence Mystery

Rademacher’s enjoyable second Provence mystery (after 2017’s Murderous Mistral) finds Capt. Roger Blanc on a road where a bicyclist died horribly, gored by a fighting bull that escaped its corral, in the Camargue region of southern France during a summer heat wave. The dogged investigating of Blanc, a Parisian cop banished to the sleepy provinces for angering senior bureaucrats, reveals that the bull was let out on purpose; the bull’s victim, prominent journalist Albert Cohen, was the target. The detective soon connects the crime with the theft of a van Gogh painting from a provincial museum and the 1980s killing of a local landowner by militant leftists. These discoveries don’t endear Blanc to his local boss. At times, Blanc can be his own worst enemy, since he’s having an affair with the wife of his biggest foe in Paris. Rademacher’s vivid descriptions of the landscape, the pleasures of French food, and the history of van Gogh’s time in the south add to the story’s appeal. Armchair travelers will be rewarded. (Nov.)