Reader Elizabeth Foxwell recently alerted me to the existence of the first academic study of the Bruno series, an article by John Scaggs - of Kansas' Southwestern College - published in Clues: A Journal of Detection.
While copyright prevents me from reproducing the essay in full, it can be read on this link, while extracts are below.
1) In their depiction of the “real” France, and in their reflections on French culture, society, and history, the Bruno novels investigate ideas of cultural difference and identity, and these investigations parallel Bruno’s own investigations as the Chief of Police of St. Denis, which expose the layers of local and national history within a fictional framework for a popular audience.
2) The rural French setting of Martin Walker’s Bruno Courrèges novels is their defining characteristic, but it is also more than simply a backdrop against which the crime plots unfold.
3) The central character of the novels, Chief of Police Benoît “Bruno” Courrèges, is the reason that they can be broadly considered police procedurals, but Bruno’s procedures often have more to do with his embeddedness in the community of St. Denis, his compassion, his tact and discretion, his sense of right and wrong, and his personal inclination to avoid having to arrest people, than they do with police teamwork and the routines and procedures of modern police investigations.
While copyright prevents me from reproducing the essay in full, it can be read on this link, while extracts are below.
1) In their depiction of the “real” France, and in their reflections on French culture, society, and history, the Bruno novels investigate ideas of cultural difference and identity, and these investigations parallel Bruno’s own investigations as the Chief of Police of St. Denis, which expose the layers of local and national history within a fictional framework for a popular audience.
2) The rural French setting of Martin Walker’s Bruno Courrèges novels is their defining characteristic, but it is also more than simply a backdrop against which the crime plots unfold.
3) The central character of the novels, Chief of Police Benoît “Bruno” Courrèges, is the reason that they can be broadly considered police procedurals, but Bruno’s procedures often have more to do with his embeddedness in the community of St. Denis, his compassion, his tact and discretion, his sense of right and wrong, and his personal inclination to avoid having to arrest people, than they do with police teamwork and the routines and procedures of modern police investigations.
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