Originally published: London : Quercus, 2008.

Meet Benoit Courréges, affectionately named Bruno, chief of police in a small village in the South of France where the rituals of the café still rule. A former soldier, Bruno has embraced the slow rhythms of country life. But the murder of an elderly North African who fought in the French army galvanizes his attention: the man had a swastika carved into his chest. When a visiting scholar helps untangle the dead man's past, Bruno's suspicions turn toward a motive more complex than hate, back to a tortured period of French history.

Former French soldier Benoît "Bruno" Courrèges has long since grown accustomed to the pace of the county. He doesn't carry a gun as a policeman, and is not known to make arrests, though it's within his power to do so. This idyll is disturbed when an elderly North African is found murdered with a swastika gouged in his torso. Bruno suspects local anti-immigrant hate groups, yet as he begins to learn more about the deceased's past, things become much more complex, with tendrils stretching all the way back to World War II.