The new black

In Competition 2808 you were invited to invent a new addition to the genre that already includes Tartan Noir and Nordic Noir. This was another invitation to leap aboard the latest literary bandwagon. The new noirs stretched from Devon to space via Middle Earth and Antarctica. You didn’t allow yourselves to be pinned down by geography, though. Basil Ransome-Davies is the proud progenitor of Expat Noir and pockets £30, while the rest of the winners earn £25.
 

Commissaire Lemaître studied the transcripts, baffled and despondent. With all their blogging and emailing the English seemed obsessed by mundane grouches, and for ever in need of advice or consolation. Requests for good yoga classes and hairdressers. Complaints of French inefficiency and greed. How to rescue a damaged swimming pool. Ponies for sale. Properties for sale. And always, always, the Eurozone money-worries.

If they were coded, who could tell? Only one thing was certain. Someone had hated Rodney Stafford enough to murder him with extreme savagery.