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The American literary scene has for some reason recently been inundated with charmingly grumpy, gourmandizing small-town detectives in picturesque dreamlands of southern Europe. Chief of Police Bruno of the fictional St. Denis, in France's Perigord wine-making district, is a worthy colleague of Inspector Montalbano of Andrea Camilleri's fictional Vigata, in Sicily, and Commissario Guido Brunetti of Donna Leon's romanticized Venice. Like them, Bruno revels in the intricacies of his local culture - and more so its food - without losing his critical eye; like them, he bemoans the bureaucratic idiocy of his superiors while gleefully circumventing it in service of justice rather than the law; like them, he knows the people of his community better than they know themselves, and loves them with all their quirks and faults; like Montalbano, he enjoys a deliciously complicated love life with a rotating cast of regular and temporary enamorata, and like Brunetti he admires and appreciates intelligent and accomplished women as more than his equals; like them both, he fears and resists the day when he must retire or move on from his chosen role in the community that fits him like his skin. (Unlike them, Bruno is a newcomer, appearing now in just 3 books over the last two years. Camilleri and Leon are established writers with popular series that each run close to 20 volumes, but have recently enjoyed growing popularity in the US.)These parallels make it impossible not to find something perhaps too familiar in the Bruno stories. And, while Martin Walker, like Camilleri and Leon, elevates his plots to incorporate the history and culture of their local regions almost as characters in themselves, with an engrossing charm, Walker tends to sensationalize just a bit: his murderers turn out to be former Gaullists with a grudge, scheming fat-cat greenmailing child molesters in drug- and sex-laced hippie communes, and corporate shills who would stop at nothing to commoditize the local terroir and ruin it with the horrors of mediocre wine-making. As with the other volumes, equally motivated by a deep love for the communities they depict, the Bruno books illustrate and explore cultural tensions that make those communities richer, and darker, than they appear on the surface. But there is a slight subtlety of touch lacking.Those are the complaints of a palette pampered with rich fare, however. Taken on their own, Walker's books are 3-star offerings: "excellent cuisine, worth a special journey". Bruno is a delightful character of perspicacity and discretion, and watching him thread his way through the entanglements of his crazy and lovable community is great fun. Walker brings France, its history, and its local mores and ways to life in an informative, but light-handed, way; the books are as enjoyable as armchair sociology as they are as policiers. And of special note, of course, is the obsession with food and the place of food in a well-situated life that runs through them. Like his fictional colleagues, Bruno's love of good meals, his visceral pain at bad ones, and his respect for foodstuffs and their proper preparation, is a foundation-block of his personality and his roots in his town and region. Bruno is more than a gourmand, however; he is a hunter, a truffle hound, a connoisseur of wine and cheese, and a cook. His preparation of meals, sometimes as simple as a quick breakfast, sometimes caring and heartfelt feasts for friends and colleagues, becomes an illustration of his personality and one of the most vivid and engaging parts of each story. It is impossible to read these books and not want to get into the kitchen right away - and impossible not to mourn the lack of the home-made wines and cheese and sausage, fresh-caught game, truffles from the forest dug up on a morning walk, and vegetables straight from the garden or weekly town market that make the life of a rural small-town French cop seem unutterably luxurious. The life of Chief of Police (and Entire Police Department) Bruno is rich and satisfying, and so are the stories we are given to read about it. "Worth a special journey."The second Bruno novel, "The Dark Vineyard", concerns the complicated machinations that surround the French wine industry. A local experimental vineyard is destroyed; radical ecological activists are suspected. The brash representative of an American wine company known for its undistinguished bulk wines wants to buy into some French prestige while imposing low-quality mass-production methods. Two local wine-makers wind up dead. A vivacious and sexy American wine student has them all on a string, while Bruno falls into equally complicated tensions between his hard-charging Paris colleague/lover and the sophisticated British retiree who loves the local region as much as he does. As in any good detective novel, at one point or another everyone looks guilty; clever plot twists unravel some of the knots while Bruno, with his deep local knowledge and unconventional methods, must deal with the rest. It's an interesting story, filled with characters steeped in French wine culture, and the increasingly-familiar assortment of odd and endearing locals. The wine-industry angle serves as an entry point for an exploration of French culture in the context of new European-Union standardization, and to the kinds of financial and political compromises that govern the relationship between business and local politics. As a detective novel, it's interesting and fun, though somewhat complicated. As just a plain good read, it's intriguing and rewarding, and best of all allows one to spend more time in the company of the charming and complex Chief Bruno.Strongly recommended.