The France that Allan Massie depicts in this, the concluding volume of his war-time Bordeaux quartet, is darker even than in the previous books. Death in Bordeaux, Dark Summer in Bordeaux and Cold Winter in Bordeaux were, as their titles suggest, painted in sombre colours; but this one is nearer to tar. You might not have thought it possible for the situation to get worse, given that under occupation the place was a snake pit, where trust had long since fled.

While the Vichy government tries to maintain an illusion of integrity, the Nazi hold on the city has tightened, its deportation and killing of Jews and resisters escalating. Meanwhile the Resistance and their former enemies the Communists finally collaborate, after Stalin joins forces with the Allies, and the Free French under General de Gaulle make stirring patriotic statements from the safety of London. In the midst of this, ordinary citizens find themselves in a state of perpetual fear and perplexity, not knowing who or what to believe. As food supplies begin to dwindle, they are growing hungry, too.

End Games in Bordeaux opens in the early summer of 1944, when Liberation by the Allies is imminent. Even when after they retake Paris, however, Bordeaux remains in limbo. It has never been more dangerous than during these final months of conflict, and Massie uses this heightened tension to powerful effect as the backdrop for the most thoughtful, and moving, of the series. From the start, the books have been refreshingly different, as much political rumination as crime fiction. Now, however, he has entered the last movement, and the story and his characters’ emotions soar towards a resolution, as if the strings were in crescendo.

In the person of Superintendent Lannes he has created a quietly memorable hero, a veteran of the Great War who as an employee of the Vichy state has had to balance the requirements of the collaborating authorities with his own more demanding conscience. Suspended from his post for disobedience when the novel opens, he is adrift and disheartened. His wife Marguerite cannot forgive him for helping their elder son to join the Free French. Their younger son is a loyal and religiously devout servant of Vichy, and their daughter is in love with a young man who has joined the Germans against the Bolsheviks, and is fighting on the Eastern Front. Thus, in what is perhaps an implausibly neat fashion, the Lannes household is stretched in every direction, none of them promising a happy outcome.

The investigation that opens the novel comes in a request for Lannes to find an innocent young well-born woman who has disappeared with her lover. Since it is a private investigation he obliges, only to discover that, as with everything else in this country, appearances are deceptive. Soon, he is involved in a far more urgent and personally motivated search for evidence to bring down the city’s most repellent collaborator, the advocate Labiche. As he digs into Labiche’s affairs, he becomes a marked man: “He already felt like an outlaw in his own city, like so many whom he has himself hunted down.” In mortal danger, he presses on regardless.

Written mainly from the perspective of Lannes, but with frequent interludes with other characters – his sons, their friends, and old acquaintances and criminals from previous books whose lives are all in peril – End Games in Bordeaux gradually gathers momentum. A melee of the respectable, and the raffish, criminal or outlawed, he draws in Lannes’ friend Yvette, a prostitute, for whom he must douse his feelings, along with rent-boys, gays young and old, and Jews in hiding. Behind all these quietly vivid scenes, one hears the drumbeat of approaching threat.

Those unfamiliar with the earlier books or with imperfect memories might be a little confused at first, and a list of characters would have been helpful. Yet, although the political situation is almost Sicilian in its convolutions, Massie is adept at explaining necessary facts without appearing to deliver a history lesson. Throughout, indeed, his tone remains as autumnal and reflective as ever.

At the start of the series, Massie appeared to pay homage to Simenon in both style and manner. As the books have progressed, however, his tone has grown richer. Descriptions remain minimal and nothing is spelled out that cannot be better hinted at. Sorrowful but never cynical, this is the work of a writer who has allowed history to be laid down for many years, before uncorking it. But what flows onto the page is mellow only in the sense that it knowing and wise. There are precious few victors by the end of this novel. As Allan Massie makes clear, war destroys everyone, to a greater or lesser degree.