Not coincidentally, because Germany is the sixth-largest book market in the world and a leader in crime fiction, the Camargue series is also written by a German, Cay Rademacher, who uses his own name. More are surely on the way, since Bong just published #8 in German, Bretonisches Vermächtnis ( The Breton Legacy).įor variety, I’ve been alternating the Breton series with the Camargue mysteries, featuring Capitaine Roger Blanc (commissaires are officers in the French National Police, while capitaine is a rank in the National Gendarmerie, a branch of the armed forces that covers small towns and rural areas). Fleur de Sel is number three, so I still have The Missing Corpse (#4) and The Killing Tide(#5) available in English. In the meantime, I’ve gone back and read the first of the Dupin mysteries, Death in Brittany, followed by Murder on Brittany Shores. The descriptions of the esoteric fleur-de-sel business were so palpable that I promptly ordered some of the handcrafted Guerande product online. Besides the displaced Parisian Dupin, there are a number of quirky characters and considerable attention paid to food and wine. In any case, these novels are redolent of the mini-Mediterranean climate in Finistère - the end of the earth, as the region is known. His books are translated not from French, but from German. Jean-Luc’s real name is Jörg Bong (no kidding), and he works at a German publishing house when he’s not visiting his beloved Brittany. A friend pointed out that “Bannalec” is a quintessential Breton name, and indeed it should be because it was handpicked by the German author who hides behind this pseudonym. It began for me with The Fleur de Sel Murders by Jean-Luc Bannalec, featuring the curmudgeonly Commissaire Georges Dupin, but most of all featuring the balmy environs of Brittany’s southwestern coast. There is a personal element of homesickness for me since I lived in that country for 11 years, but I think anyone confined to quarters and unable to visit one of the most-visited nations on the planet can benefit from these armchair sojourns. My own solution is binge-reading mystery series set in France. Many of the book lists are worthy - perhaps too worthy for the distracted state we find ourselves in. Thanks to streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video, and the British-flavored BritBox, there are so many great mystery shows to choose from, and many of them play in the sandbox of the classic British murder mysteries that remain popular over a century since Agatha Christie penned her first novel.The coronavirus lockdown has brought a cornucopia of lists for binge-watching on TV and a fair number of lists for books to read. Studios were quick to pick up on audiences' love for the genre, and the result is a myriad of thrilling and exciting television shows that have their own take on the matter. And when that charm finds itself transported into the world of murder mysteries, things get exponentially more interesting. It's hard to get enough of British charm brought into television. From these origins, the history of British television is full of examples of the popular genre, with sleuths of all ages solving everything from murder mysteries to locked room cases. Not only is Sherlock Holmes a pure British invention, but Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time with her British mysteries involving both Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple solving seemingly unsolvable crimes. This should come as no surprise to fans of the mystery genre. One of the most popular genres of television shows in the United Kingdom are classical British murder mysteries.
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