As with the other chapters of these series, the technical aspects are very well, but the script sucks. Lesbianism, homophobia, almost pedophilia (Comissaire Jean Larosière. and Louise)... :). These series can have a blissful effect: you'll value more the classical adaptations, like the "Agatha Christie's Marple". Besides the fact this book was supposed to have Marple and not two (?) detectives, and that Poirot doesn't resemble at all Larosière. Anyway, one of his better hunches is to go to mass to find out the town's gossip. Only matched by Lampion's on Kochenko's faked homosexuality.
Louise (the unloved daughter) is beautiful, and succeeds to get from our detective some remarkable phrases, for once, not famous quotations. The nanny Clemence (!), Clara (the dead blonde), Guite (the nosy maid), Rose Viliers in her stern demeanour, and specially Mme. Henriette Simonet -Catherine Wilkening- (who looks like Fanny Ardant, maybe on purpose) are also very nice. Kochenko/ M. is my favourite character, he plays it really well. There are many "Mathildes" in this world, her life summed up by Larosière: "you only have to close the casket, and shut up". And also the tall ugly woman, Angélique, "Corinne Masiero" (Emile Dubreuil's maid), who only gets happy in front of a dead pig or her beloved mother. Maitre André Simonet is also great at being disgusting: "What are your plans? Nothing, as always? Don't think! I won't feed you for long" (to his daughter, when she returns from the boarding school).
Émile Lampions's got a notebook called "DSI" (unimportant details). But to judge what is irrelevant versus stealing ideas has never been that easy: Every film buffs knows there is a really good film also dealing, not surprisingly, with a mysterious character who signs as "the crow" and sows distrust in a tiny village. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035753/ Henri-Georges Clouzot is a genius, while this crew seems to have copied only the basic idea, but not the style nor the charm.
Larosière indulges in some tenderness for Lampion: "He's the son I never had... he's got ... qualities I lack". As somebody who's always being treated badly, with scorn in the series, like it usually happens in the genre, it was a pleasant if belated surprise. I am thinking about the masterful "Inspector Morse" but there are others we all can think of.
Trying to be positive, I'll end quoting L's love lines for her unlikely romantic attachment of this occasion: "I won't forget you, but you will, and that's fine". Followed, later, by: "I'd rather have regrets than repentance/ je prefere avoir des regrets que du remords".