MURDER ON BRITTANY SHORES

A triple murder opens a new world to Commissaire Georges Dupin of the Concarneau police.

Dupin has made a surprisingly comfortable adjustment after being rusticated from Paris to Brittany. His assistant, Nolwenn, has briefed him on local customs, and Girard, owner of the local cafe, provides him with enough entrecôte frites to make even the hardest day end pleasantly. Still, nothing he has seen in Finistère—the world’s end, as the locals see it—could have prepared him for the Glénan, an archipelago of tiny islets that ride so close to the sea that some are altogether submerged at high tide. The waters are an opal color Dupin has never before seen. The air has a tang like nowhere else. And the lobster at the Quatre Vents is so fresh and delicate it almost makes him forget the lurching ride to the Glénan aboard the police speedboat that’s brought him to investigate the deaths of three businessmen: Lucas Lefort, Yannig Konan, and Grégoire Pajot. Dupin doesn’t lack for leads. Lefort is so universally despised that even his sister, Muriel, doesn’t like him. He and Yannig have been linked to schemes to dive for treasure in the Glénan and open the pristine island chain to ecotourism. They may even have a part in whatever corrupt deals are taking place between the prestigious Institut Marine de Concarneau and the shady pharmaceutical firm Medimare. As the probe continues, Dupin is increasingly confounded. How can a place so idyllic be the home of such evil?

Like his debut (Death in Brittany, 2015), the hero’s second adventure is judicious in parceling out attention to character, setting, and, most of all, plot.