The Templars’ Last Secret - Martin Walker

You sometimes wonder if poor Bruno, Chief of Police, would like to sit down and put his feet up without international crime or terrorism coming bursting into his patch so often.

But then we would miss the wonderful descriptions of Périgord country life and living that make up much of the Bruno books. A glimpse into rural France that leaves the reader hungry for more and, just as often, plain hungry.

A body has been found at a nearby chateau and Bruno is anxious to find out more. It is a young woman and she seems to have fallen while scaling a cliff where there were troglodyte chambers cut into the cliff face. Four letters have been daubed in paint on the castle wall above the body and Bruno knows that someone was with the woman as she climbed.

Plus, that someone may have arranged the body to resemble a well-known local archaeological treasure. Who and why?

The chateau has links with the Templars but Bruno feels there is more than the eye can see – and that is true of the book itself. It lays bare Bruno’s love for the area and the appealing descriptions of daily life are set against the obvious external danger that risks shattering the rural calm.

The Templars’ Last Secret, Martin Walker, Quercus, £18.99 ISBN: 978-1-78429-465-6