The Coldest Case

Written by Martin Walker

Narrated by Robert Ian Mackenzie

An anonymous skull, an unsolved murder, sinister rumors about Cold War espionage—Bruno’s investigation into a long-standing cold case takes him into the tangled inheritance of a Bergerac vineyard and into the archives of once Communist-run regions of Paris as a fierce heat wave threatens the region with fire.

After attending an exhibit on the facial reconstruction of ancient skulls, Bruno wonders if the technology might help him resolve a thirty-year-old murder case in which a body was found in the woods near St. Denis. Then the death in action of a French special forces soldier puts his DNA into the national database and a tangled family tale unfolds.

The murdered man from the cold case turns out to have been the dead soldier’s father. The mother is dead and never revealed to her husband or children that she had been made pregnant by a stranger she met on a camping holiday in St. Denis. Bruno soon starts to unravel the secrets of that camping weekend, of a young woman’s last fling before her marriage and the murder of her lover.

Through patient police work and examining old photographs, Bruno findsimages of the murdered man and his mysterious friend. They open a trail that takes Bruno from the Bergerac vineyards to the old Communist Party strongholds in the poorest quarters of Paris and their links to the comrades of the Soviet bloc. But as Bruno tries to establish whether those connections were simply fraternal or something more sinister, he finds the French establishment closing ranks against any use of the Rosenholz dossier, the master file of hundreds of thousands of Stasi agents, in East Germany and abroad, obtained by the CIA but never shared with the French.

Meanwhile a heat wave is building. The Dordogne is suffering from an intense summer drought that is sparking forest fires across the region. But, as always, Bruno will keep a cool head through it all—and, bien sûr, take time to enjoy a sumptuous Périgordian meal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781705022917

Martin Walker

Martin Walker is a former foreign correspondent in USSR, USA, Europe, and Africa for The Guardian (UK), author of histories of the Cold War and 20th century USA, and of studies of Gorbachev, Clinton, the extreme right, and more.

Reviews for The Coldest Case

[edwardsgt · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Didn't complete as totally frustrated by the publisher's ebook format which resulted in a crash at the end of every chapter and having to return to the start and page back to the crash, with no obvious way to bookmark your place. To add insult I was locked out of the support system, apparently baed in India. Big shame, what I read was usual author's excellent writing, but defeated by technology.

[krazy4katz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So, I rarely review the books in this series because they are all similar in that they are great entertainment and also a window into international politics as seen from a small town in the countryside of France. This one has a particularly interesting plot related to the mystery of the identities of a dead man and his killer. Of course, it is not that simple. There is also the issue of countries spying on both friendly and unfriendly countries that seems to happen all the time without the general public being aware. Bottom line: trust is not a concept relevant to international politics.Of course the dream of this reader (and perhaps many others) is to be a guest at one of Bruno's dinners, eating his delicious food, drinking the perfect wine (or several perfect wines — one for each course) and listening to the Baron, Gilles, Fabiola, Pamela, the Mayor and others talking about the most recent scandal to hit their town. And of course, there is Balzac. :-)My one criticism is what it has been since approximately the 8th book (can't remember exactly). Marry Florence!!

[cathyskye · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you ever find yourself in need of a pleasant escape into a mystery filled with good people, good food, and good wine, the only place you should head to is southwest France in Martin Walker's Bruno Chief of Police mysteries. In this series, friendship, food, wine, history, and culture are every bit as important as the mystery, which-- in the case of The Coldest Case-- is a very interesting one indeed. I enjoyed watching how facial reconstruction put new life into an old investigation and how trying to identify a killer led to the shadowy doings of the Stasi. Readers can count on Walker to put history into context in this modern world. I know he's certainly given me a better understanding of Europe in general and France in particular.Living in Arizona as I do and having seen over a million acres of forest consumed by fire (it's not all rocks and sand here, folks), I took particular interest in how Bruno and other officials prepared for fighting wildfires. How they could evacuate residents. Safe places they could stay. Getting those places ready. Evacuation routes. And on and on. These preparations take a lot of planning and a lot of people to carry those plans out. Walker not only brings readers right into the middle of these preparations, but he also has them coughing from the smoke and hearing the crackling of the flames.But no Bruno mystery is ever complete without the camaraderie to be found at a table filled with mouth-watering food and wine. As an added bonus, Bruno's beloved Basset hound Balzac is now a father-- there are puppies!Although Bruno is beginning to give up hope that he will ever find the right woman so he can have a family of his own, I haven't yet-- although I do wonder if a wife and children will hamper Bruno's investigative skills... or enhance them. If you're a newcomer to these Bruno mysteries, you could read The Coldest Case as a standalone, but I really wouldn't advise it. You would be missing out on all the wonderful things this series has to offer. Vive, Bruno!

[miss.mesmerized · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It’s been thirty years that Bruno’s boss J.-J. has been haunting the murderer of an unknown man found in the forest. This cold case seems unsolvable, nobody missed someone and no item which could help to identify him was ever found. Yet, as technology advances, so do the police’s possibilities. By the help of an expert in face reconstruction, they try to remodel his looks, at the same time, quite unexpectedly, another DNA search shows a hit. While J.-J. is happy that his longest case might come to a close, the lovely Périgord region is threatened by fires. While the inhabitants fear the worst, this comes on a very political level with J.-.J.’s cold case: the murderer he has been looking for might be linked to even more serious crimes and thus, national security is suddenly threatened.With Martin Walker’s series about Bruno Courrèges, you always know what you will get: it is not simply a cosy crime novel located in a beautiful region which finds its deserved place in the book by providing a lot of good food and impressive nature, but also a case which starts out as a minor incident and suddenly develops into something totally unexpected. These by now well-known ingredients also make the 14th instalment an enjoyable holiday read.What I found most fascinating in this novel were the technical explanations of how you can infer from a skull how the person has looked like. This technique might be useful not just for artistic and museological purposes but also as shown for investigative aims. It is also a clear signal that no deed is unsolvable and that with modern technology, the perfect crime might not be that perfect anymore.As a German, I was aware of the Rosenholz papers which surprisingly come up in the novel. Surely a rather deplorable part of our history but still offering a lot of food for speculation even today. So again, nothing from the past is ever really over.All in all, a pleasant cosy crime novel which makes you feel like on holiday and enjoy the atmosphere of France’s countryside.