Lucien Marrec

Lucien Marrec writes the Étienne Vallon novels: slow-burning mysteries set in the ports and river towns of northern France in 1935 and 1936, the years of the Popular Front, the great strikes and the shadow of the Spanish war.

Vallon was a police inspector in Marseille until a witness in his care was murdered. Now he keeps a lock on the Channel coast, and later checks losses for a marine insurance society in Rouen. He has a cough from Ypres, very little patience with comfortable lies, and a habit of writing the truth into reports that nobody wants to read.

If you like the quiet, weathered detectives of Georges Simenon, wet cobbles, barges in the fog and crimes that grow out of money and class rather than cleverness, these books are written for you.

The series is best read in order, starting with Lock No. 4.