Martin Walker: “A Murder in Springtime”

 

A Murder in Springtime is Martin Walker’s latest police mystery, as always starring Bruno, the police chief of a small town in (idyllic) rural France. With each successive Bruno book, Walker seems to become increasingly interested in the food that’s served at village festivals and that Bruno cooks for himself and his friends (and even for his dog). Walker spends less and less effort on the murder mystery side of the book. In this one, I felt as if solving a crime is less the main point of the book than ever. The real focus is a méchoui — that is, communally roasting a lamb on a spit over an open fire. This ritual is popular with French people who live in the countryside or visit it for a long summer stay, mainly at one’s second home outside of Paris.

In the spirit of the novel, I’ll skip describing the plot and proceed directly to a quote about the méchoui — the all-day cooking task was performed by Bruno (always dedicated to culinary activity) and several of his close friends in the village:

“The morning passed in a blur of activity. Momu taught Fabien how to build the spit for an aboveground méchoui, with Jack Crimson watching, offering unsolicited and inexpert advice. The four men made fast work of carting the lamb down from Pamela’s dining room table in its insulated box, the task made easier when Bruno pointed out they could drain the melted ice onto the lawn and lighten their load. Once the animal had been prepped, speared and hung over the hot embers, Momu asked Pamela for some large mixing bowls. Into them went several liters of cooking oil and his magic box of herbs from his car. He banished the others indoors while he set about preparing his secret baste, keeping a watchful eye on their makeshift furnace.” (p. 194)

In a way, it’s surprising that so little development of the plot can result in such a long book. If you’ve never read this series, I strongly suggest that you start with some of the earlier mysteries about Bruno and the idyllic village. 

A Méchoui in 1989

A photo from our experience with a méchoui in 1989 

at a country house in France. The revolutionary hat was part of

a celebration of 200 years since the French Revolution.

Blog post © 2026 mae sander; photo © 1989

”The Typing Lady”

 

I have read around half of The Typing Lady by Ruth Ozeki (published last week) and I’m enjoying it. The story titled “An Anthropologist’s Kid” was a really good capture of being somebody’s kid. It managed to see life from both a parent’s and a child’s viewpoint — in particular, the perspective of a faculty brat —

“In the winter we played in one of the empty seminar rooms or in my dad’s office. The secretaries let us type on their typewriters. They gave us scrap paper to draw on, and sometimes, if we begged them, they let us help run the mimeograph machine. That was our favorite. We loved the smell of the purple ink. You could almost get high on it.”

I’m planning to finish this book after I read the brand-new Martin Walker book! Bruno, chief of police is back today. 

More by Ruth Ozeki 

 I’ve read all of them, but not reviewed every one of them.

Review © 2026 mae sander

Time Flies

Autumn is coming

Time to hide some nuts and berries! (This is Mr.Chips who lives on our porch.)

A few leaves have gone from green to yellow, red, or even white.

Recent Reading

Martin Walker’s latest book about detective Bruno in rural France is a sad shadow of the earlier books in this series. There’s no real plot, no real crime, and no real character development! Bruno does cook a lot — to the point where it feels like one is reading a cookbook, with the detailed descriptions of prep and ingredients for one local dish after another. In earlier books, the cooking was an interesting distraction — here it’s totally over used. Sad to see this travesty on what was once a good detective series.

In Bury Your Past detective Tom Janssen in the English town of Wells-by-the-Sea solves the mystery of a body that has been hidden for six years. The body is uncovered by a violent storm that sets a grim mood for the many revelations that explain this and also other crimes. The detective is relatable, and the plot is well-thought-out. I hope to read more of the books by J.M.Dalgliesh.

Published in 1933, Death on the Oxford Road by E.C.R.Lorac is still a suspenseful and enjoyable read — though the author expresses some outdated attitudes towards people who didn’t fit into village society. A body is found on a little-traveled road, where very few cars pass by. Just this lack of traffic is a notable feature of life 90 years ago: cars were a rarity! Life was different then, but the main conventions of detective fiction were already in place.

 Samantha Schweblin’s short stories, set in argentina, are a little strange. What peculiar characters she depicts!

Good Food

Left: two different ways that we prepared salmon: patties and pan-broiled.
Right: blueberry pancakes and apple-peach cobbler with ice cream.

Classic dinner: lamb chops and corn-on-the-cob with butter.

© 2025 mae sander

Reading and Enjoying Spring Weather

 Julia Alvarez: The Cemetery of Untold Stories

Julia Alvarez is a wonderful story teller! In this novel, a successful New York writer decides to return to her childhood land: the Caribbean country of Dominica — which is also the birthplace of Alvarez. The character brings with her many boxes of notes and materials from novels that she hasn’t written, and creates a “cemetery” for these unrealized projects and the characters they were going to develop. She commissions a talented sculptor make a monument to each persona whose story she didn’t finish. 

The characters who now inhabit these monuments come to life and tell their stories to a local woman who has never read fiction (in fact, she can’t read at all). I loved reading these intertwined tales, along with the story of the illiterate woman herself, and of her family, which also has some members who have become successful American immigrants.

There’s so much in this novel — themes of identity; themes of chances and of opportunities both taken and missed; themes of good and bad family relationships; and themes of the history of the island, which is divided into two countries: Dominica and Haiti. Really good reading!

Claude Izner: Murder on the Eiffel Tower

This is a historical novel that takes place in Paris in 1889 during the great exposition for which the Eiffel Tower had just been built. The painstaking historical detail in the novel is fascinating — I assume it’s accurate, but I didn’t check. For example: 

“I was lucky enough to see the exhibition of Japanese prints organised by the Van Gogh brothers. The Great Wave by Hokusai made a real impression on me.” (p. 17)

“The Colonial Exhibition was made up of numerous buildings, either standing alone or grouped into indigenous villages. Victor did not wait to look at the seven pediments of the temple of Angkor but hurried towards the red structure of the Colonial Palace, an architectural mish-mash of Norwegian, Chinese and French Renaissance styles topped by green roofing.” (p. 60)

The food details are especially fun:

“Fried-fish vendors and left-over food sellers were setting up their stalls in the wind. Dishes of beetroot sat alongside rounds of cold black pudding.” (p 161) 

 

“In the kitchen, Germaine, with tousled hair and apron askew, was stirring the contents of a saucepan with a wooden spoon. Victor sniffed, recognising the aroma of partridge and cabbage in a cognac sauce.” (p. 207) 

Unfortunately, as a detective story this novel is too complicated. One murder after another piles up, and one man becomes obsessed with the murders and tries to figure out how they are linked and who is the perpetrator. At a frantic pace, he follows one suspect after another, becoming exhausted and confused. He also falls in love with a woman who is also enmeshed in the goings-on. He keeps having migraine headaches, or being hit over the head, or being baffled and overtired, or pursuing the love interest instead of the mystery. He’s always trying to think of some elusive insight that he can’t quite bring to the surface. There’s too much of this type of description:

“An idea was taking hold, but just out of his reach. He put on his frock coat as his mind worked on. … His memory was still teasing him: it was something to do with a name he had glimpsed recently, a name … But what name?” (p. 203)

I found the author’s mystery skills somewhat clumsy, and the piling-on of details and events somewhat unbelievable. Compared to Agatha Christie or other classic writers of the twentieth century, Izner just isn’t quite as good at creating a plot, embedding clues, or building suspense. I’m thinking of the well-formed detectives, victims, by-standers and witnesses in the novels of Martin Walker or Elly Griffiths or Donna Leon, and I just don’t find Izner’s focus and clarity to measure up.

Spring Pictures from This Week

Sunrise outside my bedroom window.

Just before the rain.

The beaver lodge at Matthaei Botanical Gardens.
Last year, the beaver built a dam across the stream, but a winter storm washed it away.

Michigan students painting “The Rock” — maybe in anticipation of finals during the next two weeks.

The magic spoon turns purple when the frozen ice cream touches it.
After a spring walk in the woods, we stopped for ice cream.

I enjoyed a scoop of each of these flavors.

Blog post and all photos © 2024 mae sander

Shared with Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz.

Apple Pastry

Making Tarte Tatin 

Len tried two new recipes for French apple pastries this month. First: Tarte Tatin.
Puff Pastry recipe from Bruno's Cookbook. Tarte recipe from the New York Times.

Dough and apples. A Tarte Tatin is made by cooking apples in a skillet to caramelize the sugar,
and then putting a round of dough on top and baking it.

Just our of the oven. After cooling the tarte for a little while, it's turned over onto a plate.

This upside-down tart is conventionally attributed to two sisters named Caroline and Stéphanie Tatin, who ran a hotel in in Lamotte-Beavren, a town in the Sologne region of the Loire valley in France. There are several versions of the creation of the tart. The sisters retired in 1906. Their creation thus had to be earlier than that: presumably in the late 19th century. Some years later, in the 1920s, the tart appeared on the menu at the famous Maxim's restaurant, and was also promoted by the food writer Curnonsky. 

"One should note, however, that most accounts of the dish's history point out, and other scholars agree, that upside-down fruit tarts were an ancient specialty of the Sologne region long before the 'Tarte Tatin' became famous. And the sisters never called their tart 'Tarte Tatin,' but 'Tarte solognote,' after that ancient specialty. It said to have been food writer Curnonsky, who named it Tatin, and Maxim’s who referred to it on its menu as 'La Tarte des Demoiselles Tatin ..." in hommage to the sisters." (source)

A post card of the hotel owned by the Tatin sisters.

Pompe aux Pommes, a traditional pastry from Auvergne

A "pompe" is a large apple turnover that was made for harvest celebrations in Auvergne, a region of France.
Like the Tarte Tatin, it starts with puff pastry and cooked apples. One layer of pastry underneath, one on top.

Len's Pompe aux Pommes was beautiful!

This is an even more buttery pastry than the Tarte Tatin: a very rich dish indeed !

Photos © 2024 mae e. sander

In My Oven and on the Stove in December

First, I wish everyone a very pleasant New Year’s Eve 

and a wonderful year in 2024.

Here are some photos of cooking in my kitchen this December, to be shared with Sherry’s In My Kitchen for the end of the year. Of note this month is the way I’ve been exploring so many books set in France: two mysteries set in Brittany, books about the Paris metro and the Seine River, and at last, Bruno’s Cookbook by Martin Walker. It’s been fun. I have no idea if this obsession will continue in the New Year.

Our kitchen photos show our lives up to December 27. On the 28th, we flew to Costa Rica where we are on a birding trip, but I scheduled this post to go live for the December 31 wrap up.

Inspired by Bruno’s Cookbook.

Also from Bruno's cookbook.

Assembling the chicken Marengo to take to a potluck. I adapted Julia Child’s recipe to work for a potluck.

A recipe from the New York Times.

Fried eggs for a sandwich.

Before serving, this tart is inverted on a plate, so that the onions are on top of the pastry.

A very refreshing salad: celery, green onion, capers, herbs, lemon zest & juice, olive oil.
Like many of the above preparations, this contains moderately-priced and easily available ingredients.

New in my kitchen in December

Oven-safe enameled pans -- the smaller one was used for the onion tart.

Fresh jars of spice blends to replace the ones in my pantry that have gone out-of-date.

Blog post © 2023 mae sander