Box of Bones: A Captain Darac Mystery

Morfoot’s satisfying third Captain Darac mystery (after 2017’s Fatal Music) finds Darac, an officer with Nice’s Brigade Criminelle, attending the city’s Parade of Lights when a float runs over a man. It’s unclear whether the dead man—later identified as construction worker Michel Fouste, who had a history of alcohol abuse—fell in front of the float by accident or was deliberately pushed to his death. The next day, Darac and his father visit his mother’s grave in an old cemetery in Vence, where a man shoots at them, only to be killed when the car he drives away in crashes. The motive for the attack isn’t clear when the gunman is identified as accounts manager Carl Halevy, a stranger to both Daracs. The puzzle deepens when a witness’s sketch of a man she saw at the cemetery matches a sketch of the man who may have pushed Fouste at the parade. Morfoot makes the explanation for that connection plausible, as Darac uncovers evidence linking Halevy to a notorious bank robbery. Fans of Martin Walker’s Chief of Police Bruno novels will be pleased. (Apr.)