The small shopkeepers and restaurant owners had been worried that the recession would cut the numbers of tourists, but the abundance of camp sites and affordable gite rentals has helped the Périgord do better this year than most other French regions.

Although famous for the numbers of British and Dutch holiday-makers who flock here, by far the great majority of tourists to the region are French, and they all seem to come in the month after July 14 to the middle weekend of August. That’s when the crowds are thickest, the queues longest and it gets harder to bargain in the flea markets and brocantes (antique sales). On most summer days, it can take fifteen minutes to cross the bridge at Saint Denis, and on market days it can take an hour.

Bruno’s author has already bought en primeur some of his favourite Pécharmant wine, from Chateau de Tiregand. It is owned and run by the St. Exupéry family, best known for the legendary flyer Antoine de St Exupéry, author of Le Petit Prince and Vol de Nuit.

Bruno has a special relationship with Chateau de Tiregand, whose 8 hectares of sloping land on the south-facing slopes above the river Dordogne produce red, white and rosé wines. The Chateau recently hosted a special wine-testing for a group of ten German, Swiss and Austrian journalists who had been brought to ‘Bruno-land’ by the French tourist agency. Among others, they tasted the 2007 Grand Millésime, which won gold medals at the 2009 Macon International and at last year’s Best Wines of France.

Mini-review:

“A brilliant novel about the discovery of a fragment of a prehistoric cave painting that leads back to an episode of tragedy and heroism in WWII – and to the creation of the painting itself, 17,000 years ago.” – TotalFrance.com

and welcome to this occasional blog about matters concerning Bruno and the Perigord and France, along with food and wine and other matters close to Bruno’s heart.

Readers who enjoyed ‘Bruno – chief of police’ will be encouraged to know that the second novel in the series is almost complete. The title has yet to be decided, but the plot combines fire and wine. A mysterious fire that looks like arson burns out a field growing an experimental crop of genetically-modified plants. At the same time a large international wine corporation is trying to buy land cheaply in the commune of St Denis to restore the Vezere valley to its tradition as one of the premier wine-growing areas of France. But what will such a giant enterprise do to Bruno’s beloved St Denis? And then comes a bizarre death….

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The Dutch edition of ‘Bruno, chief of police’ has now been published, and it looks very different from the rather cosy atmosphjere of the cover on the English edition, depicting a French market and a policeman with a baguette under his arm. This jolly image of French village life also graces the home page of this website.

The Dutch cover is gloomy and menacing. In the lower part of the picture, a small and lonely stone house stands in the middle of a carefully-tended vineyard. But most of the image is taken up and dominated by an ominous and brooding grey sky. There’s not a human face to be seen. It’s very powerful, and somewhat chilling.

The Canadian edition comes out soon and is very like the English edition.

The US edition is very different, a retro kind of image that recalls the 1950s. It depicts a lonely cop in blue, young and slim and bare-headed, standing apart from an anonymous crowd drawn in red and in loose outline, with very geometric but very French buildings in the background. It evokes a certain mood and period of France, when Camus was the revered author and existentialism was the fashionable philosophy. It’s very striking and we’ll try to post it here, technology permitting.

PS – The Dutch and American covers can now be seen on the ‘Bruno in different lands’ section of this website, which may be found in the contents list on the Home page.

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