With
all my books I try to use a small element of current or historical facts as a
faint (very faint mostly) backdrop – a peg on which to hang the story. This
applies equally, whether I’m writing modern-day espionage thrillers or my 1960s
French-based Inspector Lucas Rocco crime series.
The
first title back in 2010 was Death on the Marais, with a backdrop of wartime memories.
For some of the older characters it was
WW2 that formed them and their story, while Rocco is dealing with the aftermath
of his own service in France’s lengthy Indochina war in south Vietnam which
ended in 1954. For Rocco this is even harder to forget when he is posted from
Paris as part of an initiative to spread investigative skills across France to
cope with the spread of crime, and he finds himself living in a tiny backwater
village and under the command of his former army C.O. Francois Massin, now
police Commissaire for the Amiens (Picardie) division.
Having
saved Massin’s life by dragging him off the battlefield during the senior
officer’s blue funk, Rocco’s presence is clearly an embarrassing irritant Massin
would rather forget. But policing is policing and criminals don’t stop for
anyone, and the two are obliged to work together until, as Rocco suspects,
Massin will be able to get him assigned to some desert posting in the middle of
nowhere. For now, a murder in the silent marshland around Rocco’s home base of
Poissons-les-Marais carries all the hallmarks of privilege, secrets, links to
the wartime Resistance and a VIP with a history in the SOE (Special Operations
Executive) which for reasons Rocco has to uncover, he would rather forget.
In Death
on the Rive Nord, the backdrop is France’s history with Algeria, and that
country’s eventual independence, with immigrants legal and otherwise, and
criminals and industrialists trying to make a quick sou out of the situation
any way they can.
I
used the idea of assassination attempts on President Charles de Gaulle (there
were many, all unsuccessful – he really wasn’t popular in some quarters) for
the background to Death on the Pont Noir. Playing with the possibility that a
certain criminal gang from London, led by twins (I’ll leave it to your
imagination), actually got involved in one on these attempts as a cover for a
bit of cross-channel larceny, allowed me to bring in an example of British
thuggery to mix with the French.
In
the fourth of the series, Death at the Clos du Lac, it was France’s expansion
and trade with China and/or Taiwan that provided the background, with the
kidnap of a wealthy aircraft manufacturer’s wife (a true event) as an attempt
by certain opposition parties to derail the talks.
With
the latest and fifth in the series – Rocco and the Nightingale – I used (very
loosely) France’s connections with Gabon, its former territory in Central
Africa. Since achieving independence in 1960, there have been a few changes at
the top, one of the most recent being a former development minister, Antoine
Bouanga, ousted by rivals and on the run seeking sanctuary outside Amiens.
Rocco
is ordered by the Interior Ministry to protect this man, overtly to show
goodwill, but as cynics soon point out, because there is trade and money to be
made out of the many mineral rights in Gabon, and maybe this man can help if he
gets back in.
Part
of the backdrop here is personal for Rocco, however, stemming from book 2 – Rive
Nord – and the death of a leading Algerian gangster, Samir Farek. Farek’s
brother has taken over his brother’s criminal activities in Paris, and wants
revenge for Samir’s death. To achieve it he hires a top international assassin to
bring Rocco down.
With
a cast of regular characters from previous novels, such as Mme Denis, Rocco’s
neighbour, the local garde champêtre Claude Lamotte, Commissaire Massin,
Detective Desmoulins and, not forgetting the fruit rats in Rocco’s attic, it’s
business as usual, but with plenty of action to prove that while this might be
a rural backwater, crime is crime the same as it is everywhere else.
‘Rocco
and the Nightingale’ – Lucas Rocco Book 5 – ISBN-10: 0995751013 - October 19, 2017
When
a minor Paris criminal is found stabbed in the neck on a country lane in
Picardie, it looks like another case for Inspector Lucas Rocco. But instead he
is called off to watch over a Gabonese government minister, hiding out in
France following a coup. Meanwhile, Rocco discovers that there is a contract on
his head taken out by an Algerian gang leader with a personal grudge against
him. Against
orders, he follows leads on the original murder case, discovering as he does so
that the threats against him are real. When the minister is kidnapped and two replacement
guards are shot, it soon becomes apparent that the criminal’s murder, the
threats against Rocco and the minister's kidnap are all interconnected...
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1 comment:
Thank you very much for hosting this, Ayo, and supporting the publication of the book.
Adrian. x
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