John Lee's Reviews > The Shooting at Chateau Rock

Here we are again back in the Perigord at St Denis for more stories of Chief of Police Bruno Courreges. It is quite a while since I read the last but I enjoyed this return visit.

This is a book of several parts. Apart from the working life of the French village policeman, there is the hectic social scene of sports and music and certainly the dinner parties-many easily prepared after a hard days work. There is something of a cookery book detail about the preparation of some of the dishes. There is some romance and also some inimately described sex scene (although nothing to attract a downgrading of my rating as would usually be the case) and the comeback of an aging rock star (I wonder if anyone else is reminded of the same person).
Then the book changes up a few gears to a politically based spy thriller pageturner.
All the authors characters are easily pictured and from his notes at the end we read that some are drawn from life as certainly are some of the incidents covered in the second part of the story.

Books of this series regularly leave you with a 'feel good' sense. Parts of this book do too (ask Balsac) but other parts leave a slightly sour taste which has nothing to do with the regions wine.