Fully Rounded Pig

Death in the Truffle Wood by Pierre Magnan

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


First of all, I'm appalled by the cover.  How do I know this takes place in France?  Perhaps by the man in the horizontally striped boating shirt and the red beret?  Where's his baguette?
Alyre has a prized Trüffelschwein who indicates clues everywhere but is ignored.  Alyre is proud of his beautiful but unfaithful wife but, as he apparently loves the pig more, he doesn't let it bother him much.  He is more upset when someone throws a stone and injures the pig. 
Hippies who come to his town tend to disappear, so Laviolette is sent to look into the matter semi-unofficially.  He prefers to stay at small boarding houses and hang in the background observing.  The local police cooperate with him.  He investigates.  Magnan manages to make it all come off sort of quirky.  Maybe it's the pig.  Maybe it's the very nearly humorous grotesqueness.  It stoops to the "get everyone in the room and make calculated insinuations to see who blinks" wheeze then builds to a climactic if ridiculous chase scene.  And it has a nicely cynical coda.  All in all, it was worth reading.



View all my reviews