WAMU 88.5 : The Diane Rehm Show

Martin Walker: "The Crowded Grave: A Mystery Of The French Countryside"

The French novelist Balzac wrote, “The whole world can be found in a village.” For international journalist Martin Walker, that village is the fictional St. Denis on the Dordogne River. It’s the setting for a series of mysteries featuring Bruno Courreges, the local chief of police. In the latest novel, Bruno deals with a series of regional and international problems. Local duck and goose farms that produce foie gras are attacked by animal rights protestors. Terrorists threaten to disrupt a meeting between French and Spanish officials. An archeology dig unearths a “modern” skeleton at one of the region’s ancient sites. Martin walker joins us to discuss current events and his new mystery set in the French countryside.

Read An Excerpt

Excerpted from "The Crowded Grave" by Martin Walker. Copyright © 2012 by Martin Walker. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

NPR

Decades Later And Across An Ocean, A Novel Gets Its Due

John Williams' Stoner sold just 2,000 copies when it was originally published in 1965. It's now acknowledged as a classic work, is a best-seller across Europe and the No. 1 novel in the Netherlands.
NPR

Giant Renaissance Food People Descend Upon New York

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a 16th-century artist who liked to play with his food, transforming it into the building blocks of many of his fantastical portraits. Artist Philip Haas has taken those portraits out of museums, reinterpreting them as colossal statues that interact with the natural environment.
NPR

Political Takeaways: Headaches For The White House

Controversies dominated this past week's political headlines, leaving the Obama White House on the defensive, trying to contain any lasting damage. Host Rachel Martin talks with NPR's Mara Liasson.
NPR

Young Kenyans Build Mobile Apps For Local Use

College students and recent graduates crammed the top floor of a tech hub in Nairobi for a competition built around the theme "Solutions for the Next Billion Mobile Users." Africa has more than 600 million mobile phone users (approximately 11 percent of the global total) – and the number is growing.

Leave a Comment

Help keep the conversation civil. Please refer to our Terms of Use and Code of Conduct before posting your comments.