With this, the fourth of Magnan's novels to be translated, English readers are introduced to his charismatic detective hero, Commissaire Laviolette for the first time.
Banon is a small, peaceful village in upper Provence, where the local community's principal source of income comes from the cultivation and sale of truffles. Tourists and outsiders rarely venture to this remote region, but a small group of society's drop-outs have chosen to set up home on the outskirts of the village, and trouble ensues. When one of them is found dead in the freezer of a local hotel, and when a further five bodies are discovered hanging by their feet and drained of blood in the family vault of the cemetery, it takes all Commissaire Laviolette's considerable resources to unravel crimes that have been committed in a climate of centuries-old superstition and secret animosity. Not since Jean Giono has any writer been able to capture the authentic flavour, spirit and traditions of Provence, where Pierre Magnan has lived for over eighty years.
