A veteran of the French Resistance has died, and among his possessions are documents that connect him to a notorious Second World War-era train robbery. A former British spymaster's estate is burgled, the latest in a spree of expert thefts. An academic's home is broken into just as she is finishing a revelatory book on France's nuclear-weapons program. An antiques dealer is found brutally murdered, and his former lover, the number-one suspect, is on the run. It's just another summer in St. Denis for Bruno Courréges, who must balance a multitude of demands on his time and expertise--including the complex affections of two powerful women; town politics; his irrepressible puppy, Balzac; and nights entertaining friends and visitors with sumptuous repasts--with a new focus on the mounting crime wave.