Book Around the Corner

Last Concert in Vannes by Hervé Huguen (2009) Original French title: Dernier concert à Vannes.

During my holiday in Brittany, when I visited the book village Bécherel, I discovered the publisher Edition du Palémon. It’s a Breton publishing house focused on regional books and local crime fiction. If you’re abroad and want to read Breton crime fiction, their books are available in ebooks on their website. They even have three translated into English. They seem to have fifteen authors of their own on their catalogue.

I wonder why I’ve never heard of Palémon before. I picked up Last Concert in Vannes by Hervé Huguen and Hide-And-Seak in Ouessant by Françoise Le Mer which I haven’t read yet.

Last Concert in Vannes is first book of the Commissaire Baron series and it has 17 titles already. The book opens on a scene where Commissaire Baron is woken up in the middle of the night because there’s been a murder. I couldn’t help thinking about Bosch’s first appearance in The Black Echo, especially since Baron likes jazz music too.

Francine Rich’s husband found her body in their house. He’s a photographer and had gone for the weekend to take pictures. They were getting a divorce and Francine had rented an apartment in downtown Vannes.

Stéphane Arbona is the guitar player of the rock band Why Not. They had a gig at a bar, the Jack’s Potes. After the bar closed, he found a woman on the parking lot, arguing with a man. Her name was Corrine and he decided to drive her home. He went up to her apartment but they only had a drink. Now Stéphane wants to see her again but when he looks for her, she seems to have vanished.

Eventually someone connects the dots and realize that Francine and Corinne are one person and that she had well-kept secrets. The victim was also a poisonous person for people around her, her husband, lovers or colleagues. Baron digs into her past and uncovers the dirt until its muddy trail takes him to the murderer.

Last Concert in Vannes is an honest polar, in the cozy crime category. We follow Baron and his team when they investigate Francine’s murder but we also see what happens for Stéphane Arbona. A former convict, he tries to start over and doesn’t always make the best choices.

I thought that Baron was a promising character and Huguen’s style and plot were good enough to catch my attention. I kept reading to know who had killed Francine. I thought that sometimes his style was a bit old-fashioned in the choice of words. Who still calls a computer a micro instead of ordinateur or cell phone un cellulaire instead of a portable? The Brittany setting wasn’t that important, I don’t think it gave to the book a special sense of place.

All in all, it was an entertaining read.