The Body by the Sea

Starred review from February 13, 2023
The suspicious death of Pierre Chaboseau, a cardiologist and general practitioner who takes a fatal fall from a restaurant balcony, drives Bannalec’s intoxicating eighth Brittany mystery (after 2018’s The King Arthur Case). The death occurs in the harbor town of Concarneau over Pentecost weekend when Commissaire Georges Dupin and his wife expect to entertain his in-laws and most of his investigators are away. Despite the skeleton crew, Dupin soon establishes the death was a homicide and begins to look into the victim’s business dealings, particularly those with a pharmacist and a wine merchant. The trio have invested in a several local businesses, including breweries and canneries, and tension has mounted among the partners. The action takes place over two very busy days, which includes an explosion in the harbor, another murder, and Dupin frequently indulging his penchant for sampling food and drink. Bennalec smoothly blends the beauty and charm of the region into the whodunit plot. Readers will be ready to pack their bags and head to Brittany by the end of this one. Agent: Iris Brandt, Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch (Germany).

April 1, 2023
Murder comes to Concarneau. Commissaire Georges Dupin has much on his mind. Renovations have made conditions in the police station intolerable. So although Kadeg, his other inspector, is on paternity leave, Dupin allows Inspector Riwal to take his family to Belle-�le for a few days. Even his assistant, Nolwenn, gets fed up with the dust and dirt and heads for the hills, quite literally, on a bike tour of the oldest pubs in Brittany. Dupin himself is ready to take time off to spend Pentecost with his companion Claire's parents. But these plans get tossed out the window--again, quite literally--when he's called to investigate the death of Dr. Pierre Chaboseau, whose wife found him dead in the courtyard after he fell from their apartment on the upper floor of the same building housing the Amiral, Dupin's favorite restaurant. The outrage of a crime committed not only in his adopted province of Brittany, but in Concarneau, the very town he chose as his home after having been banished from Paris, is too much. Claire will have to show her parents the town on her own. Dupin scares up Rosa Le Menn and Iris Nevou, two young policewomen, to pitch in for his missing inspectors, puts in a frantic call to Nolwenn, and sets out to find the general practitioner's killer. Since Chaboseau was a sharp businessman with a finger in many pies, there are plenty of suspects to choose from. But as the web grows more extensive and diffuse, it's a tip from the late Georges Simenon, whose novel The Yellow Dog was set in Concarneau, that leads the latter-day Georges to solve a crime with deep Breton roots. The tight-wound puzzle is half the pleasure Bannalec offers. The other half is the gorgeous Breton sea.

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Starred review from April 1, 2023
The wild beauty of coastal Brittany costars with a transplanted cop from Paris in Bannalec's atmosphere-laden series. In this eighth installment, the spotlight hits Commissaire Georges Dupin's regular beat, the walled medieval town of Concarneau and its three harbors on the Bay of Biscay, where, we learn, Monet, Gauguin, and Picasso loved to paint the ever-shifting light of the ocean. Another artist figures in this mystery, the writer Georges Simenon, one of whose detective novels, The Yellow Dog, not only is set in Concarneau but, Dupin believes, may have been the blueprint for the town's latest murders. The first victim is a respected doctor who lives above Restaurant L'Amiral, a favorite hangout of Dupin's and a setting in Simenon's book. The doctor fell or was pushed out of a window in broad daylight. Then an explosion, another death, and injuries at a shipyard offer eerie connections to the first murder and to The Yellow Dog. Luckily for the reader, Commissaire Dupin's police procedure involves interrogating people in their picturesque seaside homes or in eateries with scrumptious menus, or thinking things over in one of his favorite coastal or wooded spots. This results in an abundance of Breton scenery, food, and culture, along with an ingenious mystery.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.