Death on the Marais

Death on the Marais by Adrian Magson, 2010, Allison & Busby, 382 pp

"She was going to die. She could feel it, her life ebbing away as surely as fine sand through fingers." This is the beginning of the first book in a new series written by Adrian Magson. 

As part of a 1963 nationwide initiative, Inspector Lucas Rocco finds himself working in the usually quiet village of Poissons-Les-Marais, Picardie, France under his former army CO now Commissaire Francois Massin. Marais means marshland which can be as dangerous as a murderer, a security force, and a local who deals with left over World War II bombs and grenades.


Lucas, an outspoken cop noted for his single-mindedness and tenacity in solving crimes, is aided by Claude Lamotte, the local cop, who knows the people and his way around the area.  

On his first day in the village, Lucas finds a dead woman in a wet Gestapo uniform lying in a British military cemetery. When the as yet unidentified woman is removed from the police mortuary by war hero and industrialist Philippe Berbier, the drowned woman is identified as his daughter. The crimes are set in the present but revert back to a resistance cell and a member of the SOE in W W II. 


I liked both the characters and the setting in this book and I   look forward to solving more crimes with Lucas and Claude, and finding out more about their previous lives. The plot has enough twists and red herrings to satisfy.