Before Bruno

I’ve written before on this page about Martin Walker’s absolutely amazing new bestseller, Bruno, Chief of Police from Knopf. (My review in the Barnes & Noble Review ought to be running any week now.) But it turns out that in 2002, Walker’s first novel, The Caves of Perigord, was published. Lately, I’ve been reading that novel with the same sort of pleasure I found in Bruno.

The earlier book begins in the present, at a London auction house, where Lydia Dean, an American expert in ancient art, is brought an astonishing object--what appears to be a small slice of rock from one of the famous caves of Lascaux. The man who brings it in is a retired British soldier, Jack Manners, who says he just inherited it from his father, another military officer who fought with the French Resistance during World War II--and ended up in the Vézère Valley, where Bruno (aka Benoît Courrèges) also lives.

Lydia is both shocked by the desecration of one of the world’s art treasures and excited by the discovery, which helps her keep her threatened job--at least until the piece is stolen from the auction house’s safe room. This sends Lydia and Manners off on a journey to Lascaux, where the president of France (himself a former Resistance leader) definitely has something to hide.

I could go on for pages, talking about the way Walker handles not only the present but also the World War II era. I could expound especially on the brilliance with which he flashes back 17,000 years to the actual cave artists. But you should find out for yourself what he has accomplished.