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Deadly Camargue: A Provence Mystery    by Cay Rademacher Amazon.com order for
Deadly Camargue
by Cay Rademacher
Order:  USA  Can
Minotaur, 2019 (2018)
Hardcover, Softcover, CD, e-Book
* *   Reviewed by Hilary Williamson

Deadly Camargue follows Murderous Mistral as the second of Cay Rademacher's atmospheric Provence mysteries starring quirky Capitaine Roger Blanc and his oddball colleagues.

Roger Blanc did his anti-corruption work too well in Paris and so was exiled to the south of France, both his career and his marriage in tatters. He moved into a run-down house he inherited from an uncle, once home to an olive oil press, and began work at the gendarmerie of Gadet, near Marseille.

As Deadly Camargue opens, Blanc is called to a roadside scene in the Camargue, where a black fighting bull has apparently escaped from its pasture and gored a cyclist to death. The victim was political magazine reporter Albert Cohen, in the region to write an article on Vincent van Gogh. Everyone except the Capitaine assumes it was an accident but he has his doubts.

As always he continues to do his job too well, getting in trouble with his superiors, but Blanc cannot leave well enough alone. He also continues his risky affair with investigative judge Aveline, a powerful woman with an even more powerful Minister as husband! Seems that the Capitaine is his own worst enemy.

Still, as before, he sorts through a morass of clues and red herrings to solve the case, as well as that of an unsolved art robbery on the Côte d'Azur. He - and the reader - learn about the history of rice planting in the Camargue, and Blanc brings to justice a woman with quite a past.

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