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.