Martin Walker’s bucolic mysteries set in the fruitful Périgord region of France offer a gentle reminder to slow down and smell the grapes. Having captured the area’s robust flavor and sleepy pace in “Bruno, Chief of Police,” Walker returns to the tiny village of Saint-Denis in THE DARK VINEYARD to confound Bruno Courrèges, the local policeman, with a suspicious fire at an agricultural research station experimenting with genetically modified crops. Perhaps coincidentally, an American businessman arrives in the district with a proposal to establish a winery that would alter the face of the countryside. Bruno handles both cases with great discretion, circulating so quietly and tactfully among his neighbors that his interviews are more like friendly visits. It’s a wonderful detection method and an even cannier literary strategy, allowing Walker to pursue the plot of his mystery while beguiling the reader with extended scenes of village market days, old-fashioned wine harvests and some exceptionally congenial dinner parties.

The New York Times

Martin Walker show[s] in [his] latest work that [he] know[s] full well how sinister doings can poison paradise.

Consider, for instance, Saint-Denis, the fictional village in the Dordogne winemaking region of southwestern France that serves as the setting for Mr. Walker’s captivating “The Dark Vineyard.” Here in the bucolic village, one observer notes, communal ceremonies have a timeless feel: “pagan but somehow deeply familiar . . . as though this was how all celebrations and events must have been in the past, centuries of roasted lambs and fires and wine, before the age of electricity.”

The village’s only policeman is Benoît “Bruno” Courrèges, who encountered murderous trouble when Mr. Walker introduced him to readers last year in “Bruno, Chief of Police.” This time out, the crime disturbing the tranquil scene seems more unusual than menacing: An arson fire destroys a research station where genetically modified crops are being grown.

Bruno suspects that the crime is the work of a local group of militant environmentalists. But then two people die under suspicious circumstances—both deaths caused by inhaling the carbon dioxide from fermenting grapes.

Complicating matters: Saint-Denis is in an uproar over the proposal from a California winery to buy up much of the village and develop it in nonbucolic, commercial ways. Bruno—who wants to save his town as well as protect its residents—sees the need for new jobs, but he thinks it would be almost criminal to destroy the area’s character. “There are some things more valuable than money,” he says. A friend observes: “A strange kind of policeman you are.”

Mr. Walker has written a novel that might be lower on action and gore than much of the competition, but “The Dark Vineyard” is sure to appeal to readers with a palate for mysteries with social nuance and understated charm.

The Wall Street Journal

Some mysteries shine because of their solid, even riveting sense of place, and Martin Walker’s Bruno novels have that in spades. Bruno is the Chief of Police -and the sole police officer -in little St. Denis, in France’s wonderful Dordogne region.

St. Denis is “his town,” a place where Bruno knows everyone and what makes each person tick. He hunts with some, treads wine with others, exchanges homemade delicacies with many. So when a fire destroys the agriculture research station -which seems to be experimenting with genetically modified crops without a licence -and threatens other properties nearby, he suspects the passionate environmentalists who live nearby.

But the fire is only the first of the events that endanger the peace and happiness of St. Denis in The Dark Vineyard, the second Bruno book. Big money is interested in buying up several of the small vintners and replacing them with more efficient and less notable mass production. Others have dreams of organic wine.

Some want to get out of the wine business, others to get in.

Somehow death finds its way into these conundrums, perhaps accidents, perhaps murder. To restore the joy and peace to his beloved home, Bruno must find the answers before outsiders turn everything upside down.

This is such a delightful mystery that I rushed to the library to find the first in the series, Bruno, Chief of Police. I look forward to many more visits to the Dordogne in Bruno’s company.

The StarPhoenix

More reviews to follow.