Call These Whodunits Bucolic Noir

By TOM NOLAN

We take crime's presence for granted in cities, and every big town from Baltimore to Edinburgh to Reykjavik seems to have at least one mystery novelist chronicling its fictional misdeeds. Remote, picturesque and timeless locales seem perhaps less likely sites for crime fiction—the further we move from the modern world, after all, the closer we get to the Garden of Eden. Then again, that idyllic setting, sources say, was also marred by sin.

The Dark Vineyard

By Martin Walker
Knopf, 303 pages, $23.95

The Messenger of Athens

By Anne Zouroudi
Little, Brown, 324 pages, $23.99

Two mystery writers, Martin Walker and Anne Zouroudi, show in their latest work that they know full well how sinister doings can poison paradise.

Consider, for instance, Saint-Denis, the fictional village in the Dordogne winemaking region of southwestern France that serves as the setting for Mr. Walker's captivating "The Dark Vineyard." Here in the bucolic village, one observer notes, communal ceremonies have a timeless feel: "pagan but somehow deeply familiar . . . as though this was how all celebrations and events must have been in the past, centuries of roasted lambs and fires and wine, before the age of electricity."

The village's only policeman is Benoît "Bruno" Courrèges, who encountered murderous trouble when Mr. Walker introduced him to readers last year in "Bruno, Chief of Police." This time out, the crime disturbing the tranquil scene seems more unusual than menacing: An arson fire destroys a research station where genetically modified crops are being grown.

Bruno suspects that the crime is the work of a local group of militant environmentalists. But then two people die under suspicious circumstances—both deaths caused by inhaling the carbon dioxide from fermenting grapes.

Complicating matters: Saint-Denis is in an uproar over the proposal from a California winery to buy up much of the village and develop it in nonbucolic, commercial ways. Bruno—who wants to save his town as well as protect its residents—sees the need for new jobs, but he thinks it would be almost criminal to destroy the area's character. "There are some things more valuable than money," he says. A friend observes: "A strange kind of policeman you are."

Mr. Walker has written a novel that might be lower on action and gore than much of the competition, but "The Dark Vineyard" is sure to appeal to readers with a palate for mysteries with social nuance and understated charm.

Even further removed from modernity than Saint-Denis is the fictional Greek isle of Thiminos, the setting of Anne Zouroudi's astringent "The Messenger of Athens."

The island recalls "timeless, ageless Greece," thinks an outsider, "as if ancient pan pipes might have played here, only moments ago." Locals still slaughter their own goats, and those who transgress against centuries-old traditions of family honor may meet equally harsh ends.

The discovery of the corpse of a young married woman, said to have been having an affair, at the bottom of a Thiminos cliff is soon followed by the arrival of a stranger named Hermes Diaktoros. The corpulent, fastidious Hermes, a native of Athens, disagrees with the local authorities, who have ruled the woman's death a suicide. But he is not a police detective: "I work for . . . a higher authority. Call me a private investigator, if you like."

Patient and courteous (up to a point), the Athenian goes about his business with the prescience of an oracle and the diligence of a Fate. "I don't just want to find out who killed her," he says of the dead woman. "I want to know who was responsible for her death. Which is not necessarily the same thing."

"The Messenger of Athens" is a cautionary tale about the deadly sin of lust—a riveting story told with the help of flashbacks and in a mix of first- and third-person voices. It proves as surprising as a classic detective story, and as sad and inevitable as an ancient Greek drama.