With current restrictions on travel and stay-at-home orders, you can still experience the food and culture of France through Martin Walker’s Bruno, Chief of Police series. His latest entry, The Shooting at Chateau Rock, takes you through the countryside, to village markets and to Bruno’s kitchen as he prepares his sumptuous dishes.

Gaston Driant comes to Bruno after the reading of his father’s will. Unbeknownst to Gaston, his father had made a new will, sold his farm and purchased insurance that would allow him to retire to a chateau that had recently been converted to an exclusive retirement community. He had been under a doctor’s care for his heart and his doctor assumed a fatal heart attack. The body had been quickly cremated, limiting Bruno’s investigation. As he looks into the transactions, however, there are definite irregularities. The realtor’s representative was an attractive woman who entered into an affair with the farmer and was the last person to see him alive. With no solid evidence, Bruno enforces the laws related to the neglect of the farm’s animals to delay the implementation of the transactions.

The new retirement community was financed by Stichkin, a wealthy Russian who now lives in Cyprus. With ties to Putin, he has come to the attention of French Intelligence. When Bruno is introduced to a group of young musicians who are staying at Chateau Rock he discovers that one is Stichkin’s daughter, who is engaged to the owner’s son. As a friend of the family, Bruno spends time being entertained by their music. He also learns more of the history of the Ukraine and the deaths of protesters that occurred there, an incident that Stichkin was involved in. Now someone is seeking justice and Bruno suspects that Stichkin is somehow involved in several deaths that occurred in the area.

Walker’s book is not just a mystery. It is also a celebration of life. Bruno’s constant companion is His dog Balzac. Amid the group dinners and musical interludes, Balzac, who Bruno raised from a puppy, is finally ready for breeding. Walker handles the situation with humor and sensitivity. It is this style that will make you love Bruno and his friends and make you look forward to your next virtual trip to France. I would like to thank NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishers for providing this book for my review.

I so look forward to my annual visit to Bruno and the people of St. Denis and this one does not disappoint. Walker creates a world we would all like to live in inhabited by friendly, helpful people who all get along.

When a hill farmer dies, his children find that he has sold his farm to an insurance company in return for a lifetime residency at a fancy retirement home. He then dies before he has a chance to move in. As Bruno investigates, he finds evidence of an international conspiracy involving a Russian oligarch. Meanwhile, the children of the rock star owner of Chateau Rock have come home for the summer and the son is engaged to the oligarch's daughter. The police and security forces in the persons of JJ, Isabelle, and the brigadier join with Bruno to reject the foreign bodies attempting to disrupt the peaceful life of St. Denis so everyone can get on with making dinner.

It's the perfect time to escape to Martin Walker's--and Bruno's France. The villains are as complex, the villagers as delightful and the food is even more tantalizing than ever. The perfect refuge.

I love this series! This was another winner in an excellent series. Walker makes me want to move to rural France.

The Bruno, Chief of Police books are wonderful, and this is no exception. While you can read this as a stand-alone, I highly recommend reading the series. We revisit with many recurring characters and threads of subplots from previous books carry over and carry on (particularly in Bruno's love life...I can’t wait to see if he finally connects with the woman I would like for him ).
The Shooting at the Chateau is a small departure from the others in the series; in past books aspects of French history usually play a significant role, not so in this one, as ramifications of current events influence lives in the St Dennis.

Thank you to NetGalley and Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York Publishers for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Bruno Courreges is the police chief of St. Denis in the Périgord. When he hears that a local farmer has passed away under suspicious circumstances he feels honour bound to investigate. Gaston and Claudette Driant have been left out of their father's will. He sold his farm, bought life insurance to pay for an expensive residential home that everyone who knows him feels is very much out of character for him. His children were left with a small life insurance policy, furniture, personal possession and a vehicle to split equally. Bruno and his friends investigate as to whether he was coerced into selling the farm and was his heart attack natural or brought on by external factors. Bruno is especially upset because the insurance company made no provisions for the animals that lived on the Driant farm.

There is also happenings going on at Chateau Rock where Bruno has friends as well. The more Bruno investigates, the more he feels that the two separate incidents are really very much related.