You can now grab Allan Massie’s Cold Winter in Bordeaux and Dark Summer in Bordeaux e-books for only 99p until the end of April.

Dark Summer in Bordeaux

With his son’s safe return, Superintendent Lannes and his wife can, at last, have some joy amid the grim reality of Vichy France. Not that the unexplained murders seem to have stopped. Allan Massie’s second volume in his trilogy continues the story of dogged detection in a world seemingly gone mad. His first volume, Death in Bordeaux, was reprinted three times and garlanded with praise by reviewers.

Cold Winter in Bordeaux 

Winter. 1942-3. The war is turning against Germany on the Eastern Front. The Americans land in North Africa. Meanwhile, in Bordeaux, Superintendent Lannes – himself an object of suspicion, with one son in Vichy and another with de Gaulle’s Free French – investigates the murder of a woman. It looks like a crime of passion. His subordinate, Inspector Moncerre, calls it ‘a pre-war crime’, one which they may be allowed to solve. But the dead woman has been engaged in activities which have attracted the attention of the Vichy Secret Service, the Germans, and even the Resistance.

You can buy both e-books from Amazon for only 99p until 30th April.

We’re extremely excited to announce that Allan Massie’s End Games in Bordeaux has been longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize. It looks like he’s up against some great competition too.

End Games in Bordeaux is the fourth and final chapter of the ‘Bordeaux’ novels, Allan Massie’s acclaimed crime series featuring Superintendent Lannes. It’s set in the early summer of 1944, in a France in turmoil, where the Allied invasion is nervously awaiting and brings the promise of Liberation. The Vichy regime is in its death throes. Those who have served it and collaborated with the German Occupation fear the revenge of the Resistance. Superintendent Lannes, suspended from duty by order of the Boches, searches unofficially for a missing girl, and investigates cases of historic sex abuse. The narrative of this tense economical novel switches between Lannes in Bordeaux and the young characters met in the first three books of this Vichy Quartet, now caught up in the terrible drama of these months – in France, London and on the Eastern Front.

The shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize will be announced in March. It looks like he’s up against some great names too, check out the full Walter Scott Prize longlist here.

Praise for the ‘Bordeaux’ series…

 ‘Finishing Massie’s Bordeaux Quartet, it’s hard to imagine how any work of history could give one a better understanding of the complexities of Occupied France’ The Spectator

‘I think Death in Bordeaux is both a thriller and a “literary” novel: a difficult trick, but in my book the greatest to bring off’ Robert Harris

 ‘A humane and memorable detective’ Sunday Times

 ‘Wonderfully unorthodox – and grimly convincing’ Spectator

‘Remarkable’ Literary Review

 ‘Massie expertly captures the privations of surrender’ Guardian

 ‘A compelling portrait of a family experiencing the privations of war’ Sunday Times

You can buy and read a copy of End Games in Bordeaux from Quartet Books here, or on Amazon here.