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(More customer reviews)Saint-Denis is a fictional village in the Dordogne in southwestern France. Communal ceremonies have a timeless feel: "pagan but somehow deeply familiar . . . as though this was how all celebrations and events must have been in the past, centuries of roasted lambs and fires and wine, before the age of electricity."
Benoît "Bruno" Courrèges is the only member of the Police Municipale in town. He investigates an arson fire which destroys a research station where genetically modified crops are being grown. Bruno suspects militant environmentalists. But then two people die by inhaling the carbon dioxide from fermenting grapes.
Saint-Denis itself is at war with itself; a California winery wants to develop the village commercially. Bruno wants to save Saint-Denis but also sees the need for more jobs to preserve the status quo. "There are some things more valuable than money," he says. A friend: "A strange kind of policeman you are."
Both of these main themes -- opposition to GM crops and commercial development -- are based on real life events. EU official daily debate the adverse effects of "frankenfoods", on the one hand, and their purported benefits -- higher yields, resist pests and disease better and require less fertilizer and pesticide. French nationalists have successfully defeated the attempts of California wineries to acquire French vineyards, sometimes using violence.
Set in the beautiful Southwest, this mystery has charm and local color, and teaches a bit of social responsibility along with its low key detecting.
Robert C. Ross 2010
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