Sabbatical Pleasure Readings: International Murder Mysteries

During our second two-month stay in Montreal last fall, Will and I enjoyed visiting two of Quebec Eastern Township villages identified by Louise Penny as part of her inspiration for her Inspector Armand Gamache series, set in quaint and adorable (and extraordinarily murderous...) fictional town of Three Pines, Quebec. 

As Will and I are also people who took the obligatory photo of the "Three Pines" Welcome sign--and, yes, drove to visit these towns expressly for the purpose of visiting the Three Pines inspirations--we are reminded of the ways in which part of our recent travels have mixed overall pleasure in visiting beautiful locales with the more specific thrill of actually being places mentioned in some of our favorite international murder mystery series.

We are all familiar with the term "food porn." Those pictures of luxuriously appointed kitchens or extravagantly beautiful dishes of drool-worthy food are everywhere these days--and all making us swoon with delight and envy and desire.  But is there such a thing as international "Murder Mystery Porn"? 

As avid consumers of detective fiction (and, for myself, as a teacher of the more classic varieties in the field), we have lately become engrossed with several series set in places we'd like to eventually retire to--or at least direct some current travel towards...

DONNA LEON

Enter Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti series set in Venice.  Of the three authors I'm featuring in this post, Donna Leon is probably the most accomplished writer of traditional murder mysteries.  Her plots are often intricate, and they include many typical police procedural elements--presenting multiple possible culprits, collecting evidence, interviewing suspects, checking alibi, confronting possibly corrupt superiors and inept colleagues in the police department, etc.

Leon threads through her work a sense of political menace more widespread than the limited scope of the actual murder investigation that is at the center of each novel in her long-running series.  How is all this different from works by Sara Paretsky, Michael Connelly, Marcia Muller or countless others? Simple answer: I'd much rather travel to Venice than to Chicago, LA, or even San Francisco.

LOUISE PENNY

If you find Donna Leon's Venetian setting a little too water-logged and alienating, you might come back to North America for Louise Penny's Inspector Armand Gamache series set in fictional Three Pines, Quebec, near the border of Vermont.  (Louise Penny named Knowlton and Sutton--towns we recently visited--as two of the real-life inspirations for this fictional village.)

Three Pines is a tiny village that apparently everyone wants to retire to--artists, psychiatrists, police inspectors.  Truth to tell, there are more frequent murders in this peaceful Canadian village than seems probable...

However, if you'd always wanted to move to a "Cheers" version of a village where every one of its few inhabitants knows your name, where everyone congregates for Friday evening potluck dinner, where there is one bakery and one general store and one B&B and one delectable bistro, you've come to the right place.

The novels in this series are more interconnected than in some others, so you should start from the first in the series, Still Life.  

MARTIN WALKER

After Will and I whizzed through both Donna Leon's and Louise Penny's series (though, never fear, they both continue to write more), we started a new one, this one set in Dordogne region in St. Denis, France.  Martin Walker's Bruno Courreges series combines descriptions of inviting or dramatic countryside (like one pictured at the top of this post) and gourmet cooking with an educational topic du jour each novel.  One might teach you about the role of occupied France during World War II, or about the wine industry, or truffle hunting, or cave painting.  You get the idea.

As murder mysteries go, Martin Walker is a bit light on clues and suspects and the investigative process (though they have gotten more intricate as the series has progressed beyond the first couple).  It doesn't take much detective fiction savvy to figure out "whodunit" fairly early in each novel.  On the other hand, there are enough descriptions of panoramic views of beautiful Perigord region and scenes of Bruno preparing truffle-infused omelets to compensate.

In fact, we'd love to grab one of these stone cottages with climbing rose bushes...

It must be admitted that, having already visited Venice years ago, we made a point of traveling through Dordogne in 2016 and driving through Quebec's Eastern Township villages last fall, almost entirely inspired by these novel series.  This symbiotic relationship between our travels and our pleasure readings is something we want to nurture in our sabbatical life!