SHOTSMAG CONFIDENTIAL

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Martin Walker on Finding your Roots Posted: 08 Jun 2022 10:00 PM PDT   Every crime writer needs roots; a place that can become a character in itself. Sherlock Holmes had Victorian London: a hansom cab rolling through the fog; cheerful street urchins and opium dens in Limehouse. Maigret had his bistro and Donna Leon has Venice. Raymond Chandler had Los Angeles before it became Hollywood and Jack Reacher has his Greyhound bus.  Before I knew it, the Perigord had taken over my work and become the core character that slowly but surely embraced everything. The painted caves of our Cro-Magnon ancestors and the ancient castles became essential props to the sense of time and place that define the region to this day.  Wines seeped in at first to accompany the food but then the town vineyard was born in my mind and the splendid wines of the Pécharmant and of Montravel and Monbazillac became an amiable flood. Soon it was followed by the hunters and the wild boar and venison that they roasted for communal feasts. Then the horses became characters in their own right and the basset hounds began to steal the show, while the medieval fortresses began to clamour for their own special place in the stories I wanted to tell.  The more I learned about the region the more it began to shape my novels, from the Abbot of Sarlat who who was murdered by a crossbow bolt while preaching at his own pulpit to the twelve centuries of the half-ruined castle of Commarque, founded in Charlemagne's day and a direct descendant of that same first 8th century Count who eleven centuries later became a Resistance leader who was taken by the Gestapo to die in a concentration camp in 1944.  Maybe a better writer could have withstood this constant, insidious pressure of the place where I was crafting my stories of Bruno, the local policeman of the small town of St Denis. But Bruno was never just a cop. He had served ten years in the French army, been wounded in Sarajevo while wearing the blue helmet of a United Nations peacekeeper. He spends his spare time teaching the local kids to play tennis and rugby, is a member of two local hunting clubs and relishes his extra duties as impresario of the free concerts his town presents on the river bank in summer.  And here is the strange thing. Bruno was inspired by my friend and tennis partner Pierrot. Jean-Jacques, the chief detective of the department, was inspired by my neighbour Raymond, a veteran captain of Gendarmes. Jack Crimson, the retired British diplomat with intelligence connections, was inspired by another friend who had better remain nameless. Gilles, the journalist for Paris Match, was drawn from another friend and the mayor in my stories was inspired by the two splendid mayors of my town. From different political parties they each became friends. Hubert, who runs the local wine store, was drawn from my friend Julien Montfort, the wine merchant with his own vineyard with whom I make the Cuvée Bruno wine of which we are so proud.  But the women in my novels have no such inspiration in real life. There is no ambitious Isabelle, building a magnificent career in French intelligence; no Pamela from Scotland with her disastrous marriage to an English banker behind her, to run the local riding school. There is no real-life model for Fabiola, the local doctor, nor for Florence, the divorced mother of twins whom Bruno rescued from a wretched job to become a respected teacher in St Denis.  Somehow, the women I know are too elusive, too mysterious and unique ever to be drawn into the invented characters of my novels. There are women in my life; my mother, Dorothy McNeil from the Hebridean island of Barra; and Julia, my adored and beautiful wife of more than four decades, a mavellous food writer and magnificent cook. There are our daughters, Kate the Formula One journalist, and Fanny, the poet. But I'd never dare try to insert them into my novels. There are female relatives and friends whose company and intelligence I relish and admire, but they all remain unique to themselves, unfathomable in their privacy which I shrink from trying to invade.  Finally, there is the town I call St Denis, which is mostly drawn from the small town to which we can walk on market day. But I have imported an ancient church from elsewhere. I have recalled into life a local café that used to make the finest croissants but which has long since changed hands. And I have invented a genial old priest who is wise, devout but utterly understanding of the various flawed and absent faiths of his neighbours. I have even dreamed up a local restaurant that I wish truly existed. But given all the gifts that my Périgord has given me, that might be too much to ask.  To Kill a Troubadour by Martin Walker (Quercus Publishing) Out Now It is summer in St Denis and Bruno is busy organising the annual village concert. He's hired a local Perigord folk group, Les Troubadours, to perform their latest hit 'A Song for Catalonia'. But when the song unexpectedly goes viral, the Spanish government, clamping down on the Catalonian bid for independence, bans Les Troubadours from performing it. The timing couldn't be worse, and Bruno finds himself under yet more pressure when a specialist sniper's bullet is found in a wrecked car near Bergerac. The car was reportedly stolen on the Spanish frontier and the Spanish government sends warning that a group of nationalist extremists may be planning an assassination in France. Bruno immediately suspects that Les Troubadours and their audience might be in danger. Bruno must organise security and ensure that his beloved town and its people are safe - the stakes are high for France's favourite policeman. More information about Martin Walker and his books can be found on his website. You can also find him on Facebook.

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