A tense thriller that still lets you savour the tastes of France: The best Classic Crime novels out now - An Enemy in the Village by Martin Walker, Night at the Crossroads by Georges Simenon, And Cauldron Bubble by Brian Flynn

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

An Enemy in the Village by Martin Walker (Quercus £22, 320pp)
The latest adventure for Bruno Courreges, chief of police for a small hill town in the Dordogne, is an annual treat for readers who hanker after the good life. But in every paradise a serpent lurks.
When Bruno comes across a dead woman in an abandoned car, all the signs point to suicide. Yet, the departed was a successful businesswoman.
Complications and unanswered questions multiply when it emerges that she has left the firm she created to her business partners, with her husband getting nothing except the marital home.
When the will is contested, Bruno finds himself up against corrupt lawyers and politicians who aim to bring his career to an inglorious end. With strong characterisation, Walker keeps up the tension while providing welcome breaks in the narrative for readers to savour the best in French food and wine.
Night at the Crossroads by Georges Simenon (Penguin Modern Classics £9.99, 160pp)
Georges Simenon was a prolific and fast writer. In 1931 alone, he published 11 Maigret novels.
Night At The Crossroads has a youngish Maigret as the tough cop interrogating a murder suspect for 17 hours. But without result. Who, then, was it who dispatched a diamond merchant whose body has been found at a remote house outside Paris?
Brought vividly to life by Simenon's sparse but highly readable style, the suspects include a pompous insurance agent, an over-familiar garage owner and a supposedly frail woman who rarely moves from her bedroom. All are hiding something from Maigret and from each other. The battle of wits builds to a terrific climax.
And Cauldron Bubble by Brian Flynn (Dean Street Press £10.99, 284pp)
A popular crime writer in the early post-war years, Flynn was displaced by the upcoming generation who favoured gutsier content. But this is to under-rate an author who had a sharp eye for detection as seen through the eyes of Anthony Bathurst, a gentlemanly private investigator on assignment to Scotland Yard.
The plot hangs on the murder of a popular, elderly, genteel lady and her companion. Where is the motive for their untimely deaths? While unravelling the last days of the victims, Bathurst is led up several blind alleys.
Moving along at a cracking pace, Flynn is perhaps overly keen to drop too many red herrings, including a whopper early in the book. But keeping up with a convoluted plot is all part of the fun.