AN ISLAND OF SUSPECTS

A beautiful Breton island is the scene of an ugly murder.

Two days before Commissaire Georges Dupin is scheduled to mark his 10th year in Brittany with a party planned by his colleagues, he gets a call about a body found in the harbor at Doëlan. The dead man turns out to be Patric Provost, a resident of Belle-Île, one of three small islands off the Breton coast. Dupin’s decade of service has never before brought him to Belle-Île, and he’s instantly smitten. The sea offers a cavalcade of blues, and the lichen-covered rocks glitter green, silver, lavender, and even pink. Each turn of the road brings a vista more spectacular than the last. Dupin’s investigation is far more prosaic. Provost was a miserable old codger who seemed bent on thwarting the hopes and dreams of every one of his Bellilois neighbors. So, as the title suggests, there’s no dearth of suspects. Unfortunately, Dupin’s thorough interviews generate a timetable that eliminates all of them. It takes considerable ingenuity and luck to determine who could have been in the right places at the right times to dispatch Provost, but insight strikes in the nick of time, allowing Dupin’s well-deserved celebration to go forward as planned. The star of the show, as always, is the meticulously described local color, with extra marks this time for showcasing a little-known gem.

Bannalec’s puzzle may be timeworn, but his Brittany is timeless.