Set in French Brittany, this detective novel takes pleasure in the landscape and characters of Concarneau and Pont-Aven, where Gauguin and other painters of that school produced many works of art and lived in the hotel that is the crime scene in the novel. It is entertaining, well written and with the pleasant Breton landscape as a background.
L.P. (2014).
It is the first novel of a series with detective Dupin as a protagonist. Style, the setting in French Brittany and the main characters reflect the author’s congeniality for this region. The protagonist has been “exiled” to this region of Land’s End (finis terrae), where he gets slowly familiarized with the Breton milieu with the help of secretary Nolwenn.
In picturesque Pont-Aven the owner of the legendary Central Hotel, abode of Gauguin and other famous artists, gets murdered. What could motivate a multiple knifing of a 91-year old? Dupin begins by investigating the last days of the victim, but the quest gets complicated by the appearance of a second corpse at the nearby coast. Public opinion’s pressure heats up, as does that of the police prefect, eager to appear before the press with the case solved. Besides the interesting criminal case, the author writes in an entertaining, intelligent fashion. Readers are enticed into loving Brittany, even without having been anywhere near the place. From the moral point of view, the author distinguishes between moral and immoral behavior, clarifying the ethical level of his characters. The final dialogue between the detective and the prefect leaves open the issue of how the powerful, by means of legal appeals, may succeed in legalizing an immoral conduct.
F.B. (Alemania, 2016).