Some time ago, I found a trove of excellent condition Bruno mysteries at my regular thrift shop. I wasn't familiar with the series, but I bought the whole stack. I have several partially complete collections of murder mystery series. I must write this every time I read a murder mystery, but the TV I watch consists almost exclusively of murder mysteries. I enjoy reading them as well, but rarely prioritize reading them. So my many partial collections remain mostly unread. (The one exception is Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie books, the first four of which I read in the space of a year. I completely missed that a new one came out last year!) I guess when I do pick up a murder mystery to read, I'm usually looking for something specific. A quick, absorbing read to be sure. Part of me is, I think, also looking for what I get from the TV shows: something I will want to go back to again and again. That's surely why I'm drawn to the series, in theory.
As a natural completist, I always feel I have to start at the beginning (a rule I've broken a couple times and usually regretted).
Bruno, Chief of Police, is the first of this series, set in the Dordogne in southern France. Food, drink, and the weekly market play a big role in this book and are described with enthusiasm (so much so that these books
made an appearance in the NY Times Food section). It's a bit to the southeast of where this book is set, but I kept picturing the village of Mirepoix in the Ariège, which I visited last year, as I was reading this. I'm not in any rush to jump into the rest of the series, but this was an enjoyable read.
