THE EXPATS

The ice cream was a plausible explanation. They'd had too much to drink, most of the food in the dining room was gone, they didn't want any more ham. No one wanted anymore ham. Everywhere everyone went, there were ham sandwiches. In bakeries and butchers, supermarkets and cafes. At the kiosks in malls, in the vending machines in offices, under glass domes on the counters at gyms, on airplanes. God-damned ham sandwiches, everywhere.
The Expats
Chris Pavone.

Loved this rant. I made similar rants during our recent 4-weeks in France. Really. How do those Parisiene ladies stay so thin with all the pork on offer? Realistically, the slices of ham on those sandwiches are thin and few--mostly baguette. Finding a chicken sandwich was like winning the lottery.

Liked the book. It skips around a bit which CA didn't love, but I managed to follow the thread. And, the publisher employs font changes to nudge you into the right timeframe.

Martin Walker's Bruno

So, after reading Black Diamond I checked three more Martin Walker books from our library system in Northern Illinois and read them in chronological order. The first is not about Bruno, but indeed sets the background for much of the back story for this village in the Dordogne Region of Southwest France.

An art-history mystery that spans 17,000 years, THE CAVES OF PÉRIGORD is an ntertaining romp through the part of southern France known for its cave paintings, including the famous Lascaux cave. Written by historian and National Public Radio commentator Martin Walker, the book is divided into segments set in three separate times: the present; 1943-44; and circa 15,000 B.C. Romance, war, and betrayal are intertwined with French politics, ancient religion, murder, family, and feminism. It's a lot to hold together in one book, but although some of the dialogue sounds wooden and the writing isn't always gloriously lyrical, Walker does a good job of maintaining intrigue while avoiding confusion.
The Book Reporter


Then, the Bruno series...

Benoît "Bruno" Courrèges is a master chef and devoted oenophile in the town of St. Denis in the beautiful Dordogne region of France. He also happens to be the town's beloved Chief of Police. In Martin Walker's three books, BRUNO, CHIEF OF POLICE, THE DARK VINEYARD, and, most recently, BLACK DIAMOND, Bruno's had his hands full with murders, suspicious fires, and truffle-smuggling ring. Get to know Bruno with excerpts from all three books!
Alfred A Knopf


And, it looks like Bruno has a new set of mysteries to solve coming this July. I'll look forward to this one, too.

Edge

The man who wanted to kill the young woman sitting beside me was three-quarters of a mile behind us, as we drove trough a pastoral setting of tobacco and cotton fields this humid morning.


A glance in the rearview mirror revealed a sliver of car, moving at a comfortable pace with the traffic, piloted by a man who by all appearances seemed hardly different from any one of a hundred drivers on this recently resurfaced divided highway.


* * *


When innocent people find themselves in situations that require the presence and protection of people like me, their reaction more often than not is a smuch bewilderment as fear. Mortality is tough to process.


But keeping people safe, keeping people alive, is a business like any other. I frequently told this to my protege and the others in the office, probably irritating them to no end with both the repetition and the stodgy tone. But I kept saying it because you can't forget, ever. It's a business with rigid procedures that we study the way surgeons learn to slice flesh precisely and pilots learn to keep tons of metal safely aloft. These techniques have been honed over the years and they worked.
Edge
Jeffrey Deaver

This is a riveting read. Truly. I loved it. Many, many twists and a few switch-backs. It's that curvey. Still, it held my attention and I sped through it in under 24 hours. Sometimes I just have to. And, I had the time yesterday.

Black Diamond

There were not many times that Bruno Courreges disliked his job. But today was certainly one of them. The weather was not to blame, a crisp day in late November with thin, high clouds trailing feebly across a sky that was determined to be blue. And even this early in the morning the sun was warm on his face and lending a rick gold to the few remaining leaves on the line of old oaks that fringed the town's rugby field. It gave warmth to the aged stone of the mairie across the river and to the red tile roofs of houses that climbed the hillside. The season was still mild enough, he noticed, for the women to have thrown open their windows and the blue wooden shutters. Splashes of white and blue, stripes and floral patterns adorned the townscape where they had heaped out bedding to air on the balconies, as their mothers and grandmothers had done before them. It might be the last day of the year that would be possible. A touch of frost had silvered the grass outside his cottage when Bruno walked his dog just after dawn that morning, and he had heard the first of the Christmas Muzak in the supermarket over the weekend.
Black Diamond
Martin Walker


Doesn't the opening paragraph just make you want to find that village, move there, and throw open your own patina'd blue wooden shutters?

I like Bruno enough to have decided to read the backlist--this is the third in the series, and there's a fourth. Fast read, entertaining. Fun. And, I know so, so much more about truffle hunting, the market, etc. than I'll ever use.

I'm soon off to find some of those black diamonds to sniff out and taste.

A FAREWELL TO FRANCE

(This is a big, thick book. Actually, the copy I bought used on Amazon is a Doubleday Book Club edition. It took me a lot of time to read. Unusual for me, but I was somewhat indisposed (Shingles) during the time I was reading it. I loved returning to it every single night at bedtime. I love this book.)

For all our youth the Astell family had lived in and out of Douzy, the small chateau named after the village, hidden by vineyards lining the gentle, sloping hills of Champagne. My American father and mother, his father's father, my French grandma, my brother and his twin sister, our friends, our lovers--all had made up a patchwork of happiness that none believe would ever end.

* * *

That was before. But then the serenity of Douzy was exchanged for lives that tore us apart, of death and torture for some, despite neutrality, and eventually, after America entered the war, for me a life spent in ditches and barns, hunting the enemy or being hunted--to protect or to kill.

A Farewell to France
Noel Barber

I will begin to read everything written by Noel Barber. Everything. He's written loads of fiction and non-fiction. This book is his second novel, and it makes me want to read his first, Tanamera (which is also a film) and then to proceed through his entire roster.

Noel Barber was for many years the chief foreign correspondent for the London Daily Mail. He was the first Briton to reach the South Pole since Scott, was stabbed five times covering wars in Momrocco, reported on the fall of France to the Nazis, was shot during the Hungarian uprising, and walked across the Himalayas to report the Dalai Lama's escape to India.
from the back cover flap

A FAREWELL TO FRANCE

Loving this book. Loving it. It's a long one, which is great since I've been under the weather and in need of distraction. I've not finished it yet, but already I know I want to read everything Noel Barber has written. And, that's a lot--fiction and non-fiction..

Whoops! The above links are Amazon U.K. Here's a U.S. link.

Be back soon with more details and my review.


Fiction
Tanamera: A Novel of Singapore (1981)
A Farewell to France (1983)
A Woman of Cairo (1984)
The Other Side of Paradise (1986)
The Weeping and the Laughter (1988)
The Daughters of the Prince (1990)

Non-fiction

Cities (1951) (with Rupert Croft-Cooke)
Fires of Spring (1952)
Strangers in the Sun (1955)
A Handful of Ashes: A Personal Testament of the Battle of Budapest (1957)
The White Desert (1958)
Distant Places (1959)
The Flight of the Dalai Lama (1960)
Life with Titina (1961)
Adventures At Both Poles (1963)
Conversations with Painters (1964)
The Black Hole of Calcutta (1965)
Let's Visit the USA (1967)
Sinister Twilight: The Fall And Rise Again of Singapore (1968)
From the Land of Lost Content (1969)
The War of the Running Dogs: How Malaya Defeated the Communist Guerrillas, 1948-60 (1971)
The Sultans (1973)
Lords of the Golden Horn: From Suleiman the Magnificent to Kamal Ataturk (1973)
Seven Days of Freedom: Hungarian Uprising, 1956 (1974)
The Week France Fell: June 10-16, 1940 (1976)
The Natives Were Friendly So We Stayed the Night (1977)
The Singapore Story (1978)
Fall of Shanghai: Communist Takeover in 1949 (1979)
Sakkara (1985

About Noel Barber

Noel Barber has enchanted millions of readers with his bestselling novels. These powerfully exotic novels have each become timeless classics in which he drew upon his own experience as one of the leading foreign correspondents from the '40s to '60s working on the Daily Mail. He was the first Briton to reach the South Pole since Scott, was stabbed five times covering the wars in Morocco, and was shot during the Hungarian uprising. He died in 1988.

NADA

Can I just say that I haven't read much of anything memorable for months and months. Really. Oh, there have been a few quotes that caught my attention, but mostly in mediocre books. I'm always reading. Stay tuned.