Peachy Reads

This was a serendipitous find on the library’s downloadable service.  Commissaire Dupin is a Parisian who was shipped out to the “boonies” on the Celtic fringe of France to continue his police detective career after he apparently stepped on some toes in the capital city with his sometimes unorthodox approach.  Brittany is as much of a character as any human character in this book—its landscape, its history, its culture, its language, its food.  I really liked Dupin and his constant need for quality coffee and a good entrec ô te.   The murder plot was captivating,  taking place in Pont Aven, the artists’ colony that most famously is associated with Gauguin before he went to Tahiti.  I had the feeling that I was reading a native’s view of the province, but found out later that Jean-Luc Bannalec is a pseudonym for a German author.  And so popular is the series in Germany that it has even been made into a television series.  I felt like it was more authentic  to France than Cara Black’s

OK, so only progressives are likely to pick up this book.  But Al Franken’s story is unique.  An outsider with a long background in show business, Franken  tries his hand at national politics.  Sound familiar?  Maybe it’s the new normal.  As funny as Franken is (and he does try to put a lid on it to give his office the serious tone it deserves), he’s extremely smart, and seems to have an excellent political sense, reaches across the proverbial aisle, and sees the “big picture”.  And, at least in the book, he inserts a lot of levity into everything.  I found it interesting to see how his campaign was organized, how at first he didn’t have the blessing of the Democratic leadership, how he clawed his way up the polls (without the apparent help of foreign agents), and suffered through a months-long recount, before finally being seated as the junior Senator from Minnesota.  It’s also interesting to get an insight into how Congressional offices function and what dedicated senators like Al

A food writer is on the rebound after a broken relationship (she ran off with her personal trainer).  A working trip to Montalcino, a hill town in Italy, is the kind of restorative getaway that he needs to put his life and career back on track.  Except the start of the trip seems to go so wrong.  After finding himself in an Italian jail after a rental car agent tries to hoodwink him, and due to an undersupply of available  cars owing to a holiday weekend, he has no other option than to drive a bulldozer from Pisa to his hilltop pension.  It’s  a humorous  prologue which nearly hijacks the entire story, but luckily there’s much more to the novel once the bulldozer is parked in the municipal lot at Montalcino.  As with most McCall Smith’s novels, there’s a lot of talk about life and about nothing, but human relationships are front and center, and by the end of it, Paul has things sorted out satisfactorily.