Detective Lauriant, a cynical, yet compassionate, investigator who always gets his man, is back with two murder mysteries rolled into one volume. In "A Dead Man's Morning, " Detective Lauriant feels he's at a crossroads in his life. He is in the small town of Sarcelles sur Mures to attend the funeral of the invalid husband of his close friend Mimi. Lauriant has long been attracted to Mimi, and Mimi needs to reach decisions about her future and whether Lauriant should figure in it. While in Sarcelles sur Mures an old colleague, Chief Inspector Guichard, tricks Lauriant into undertaking an investigation into the deliberate drowning of an innocent man. The search for the truth leads Lauriant to explore contrasting worlds, uncover an unresolved past, and question the motives of his own friends. In "The Sins of the Fathers, " Lauriant is on a long--overdue holiday when he is ordered by a state secretary at the Ministry of the Interior to investigate the death of a general, who has been forced to retire because of his -political views. Lauriant's investigation, which begins in Aix-en-Provence, leads him into a web of intrigue and terrorism involving Arab and European terror organizations and resulting in an attempt on the life of the -President of France. Lauriant's search for the truth behind the motives of the general's murder places him in danger -- danger that can only be overcome if he can break away from the sinister world of bitter rivalries, treachery, and deceit, and pursue the investigation on his own terms. For fans of Maigret and Inspector Imanishi, these two new Detective Lauriant mysteries will leave fans anxiously awaiting more stories of rural France, murder, and intrigue from Graham R. Wood.