Pierre Magnan was a bestselling French author of detective novels steeped in the sights and sounds of his beloved Provence; to readers, his sleuth, Commissaire Laviolette, was as indelibly linked to the land of lavender as Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse was to the colleges of Oxford.

Magnan’s autumnal years were prolific; he wrote more than 30 books and saw his novels adapted for French television and cinema. He was never afraid to experiment and shifted easily to non-fiction, writing, amongst other publications, a gentle portrait of Giono (Pour Saluer Giono, 1990), a study of Provençal novels (Les Romans de ma Provence, 1998) and two volumes of memoirs. In The Essence of Provence (1998) he followed the story of L’Occitane from roadside soap stand to globally known brand. “La Provence was present in all his books,” noted Marie-Laure Goumet, his editor at Robert Laffont.