Tropeano's Gun
An Aliette Nouvelle Mystery
- Publisher
- Signature Editions
- Initial publish date
- Nov 2014
- Category
- Police Procedural, Women Sleuths
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781927426548
- Publish Date
- Nov 2014
- List Price
- $18.95
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Description
Can Chief Inspector Aliette Nouvelle learn to love her gun? She’d better. Her career depends on a drastic about-face. Tropeano's Gun, the 6th instalment in the series, revolves around a veteran cop’s struggle to change her approach to fighting crime in an increasingly gun-infested world. At the same time, a series of street murders shakes Beziers, the Midi city 40 kilometres from Aliette’s home base at the wine town of Saint-Brin, where she heads a small Police Judiciaire brigade responsible for a sprawling rural territory. The killings in the city are not her business. But Aliette is drawn into the mystery by a need to defend her beleaguered colleague and counterpart, Chief Inspector Nabi Zabine, head of the city-based PJ force.
About the author
John Brooke became fascinated by criminality and police work listening to the courtroom stories and observations of his father, a long-serving judge. Although he lives in Montreal, John makes frequent trips to France for both pleasure and research. He earns a living as a freelance writer and translator, and has also worked as a film and video editor as well as directed four films on modern dance. His poetry and short stories have been widely published and in 1998 his story "The Finer Points of Apples" won him the Journey Prize. Brooke's first Inspector Aliette Nouvelle mystery, The Voice of Aliette Nouvelle, was published in 1999, followed by All Pure Souls in 2001. He took a break from Aliette with the publication of his novel Last Days of Montreal in 2004, but returned with her in 2011 with Stifling Folds of Love and The Unknown Masterpiece in 2012.
Excerpt: Tropeano's Gun: An Aliette Nouvelle Mystery (by (author) John Brooke)
nspector Vincent Spanghero had quit the force last spring, very suddenly, then disappeared. No one, including his wife and children, had seen him since. The weeks and months leading up to that day had been tempestuous. Aliette, working through her first year at her new posting, was still a stranger. She had been aware, but from a distance. But it was no secret Vincent Spanghero had tried and apparently failed to live with the fact that Nabi Zidane, his former partner on the street, had won the top city job. The situation had been simmering for more than a year, since Nabi had moved into the corner office on the third floor at Hôtel de Police. Openly bitter, Spanghero had grown stubbornly maverick. His volatile temper even erupted during instructions?—?Sergio had felt the brunt of it more than once. ‘It rarely had to do with the case at hand. It was simply and crudely to make a point. In giving the job to Nabi, they had made a big mistake. Vincent seized every opportunity he could to let them?…?us, everyone know.’
Aliette had not known Sergio then, except as a face in the hall at the Palais de Justice.
Sergio ventured that Vincent Spanghero had probably sealed the deal five months before his sudden departure, when he’d ignored a direct command from Nabi, and sent his men into a dangerous situation. One was killed?—?Inspector Menaud Rhéaume. In the aftermath, Zidane and his group had tried to cope and carry on in what amounted to a failed attempt at solidarity. Politically iffy, psychologically impossible. ‘But Nabi tried. Not easy?… It was mainly for Spanghero, his career, if not their friendship. And Vincent tried too. For a bit. Tried to calm down. He did calm down. Got kind of silent, is what I’m hearing. Then he walks in one day last June, drops his warrant card on Nabi’s desk and that’s it. Gone. Totally gone.’
Was Vincent Spanghero back, wreaking revenge? The obvious evidence said yes.
