The Messengers of Death - Tapa blanda

"A unique and disturbing summer read... Pierre Magnan is a complete original" (Sunday Times)

"The author has developed a cunning sleight-of-hand in thrusting a key clue under the reader's nose, yet disguising it. Veteran reader of crime fiction though I am, I didn't guess correctly. But the atmosphere is most to be relished. The lavishly complicated plot unfolds among spine-tingling descriptions of remote Provence" (Jane Jakeman Independent)

"From real to surreal...This quirky story of avarice and vengeance in rural France unfolds with all the charm of a slightly puzzling art house french movie" (Carla McKay Daily Mail)

"Crime fiction for those with a soul and a dark sense of humour" (Independent on Sunday)

"Magnan chronicles the hidden passions seething below the apparently idyllic surface of rural life [in a style] closer to Flaubert than Midsomer Murders" (Daily Telegraph)

In a sleepy Provencal village, retired postman Emile Pencenat is busy digging his own grave when he spots an unstamped letter in the cemetery's disused postbox, addressed to a Madamoiselle Champourcieux. He dutifully posts the letter. When the body of this same Madamoiselle is later discovered - pinned to her piano with an ancient bayonet - Commissaire Laviolette is coaxed out of retirement to solve one of the most bizarre crimes imaginable.