Happy Friday everyone, I’ve got a mystery series for you that has a fourth instalment that came out this week – and I’ve read all four this year so they’re even fresh in my mind!
The French Village mysteries are about Zoe, who moves to Provence to take over a bookshop in a hilltop village because she wants to spend her older years somewhere with books, good food and lovely scenery. The first book was a BotW back at the end of March and covers her arrival in Sainte-Catherine and a body that is found in the church. Initially the locals are hostile to Zoe but as the books have gone on she’s gathered a group of friends in the village who have become regular characters.
The second book, Murder at the Chateau is set in a dilapidated chateau where Zoe staying visiting an old friend when a death happens. In The French Market Murder we’re back in Sainte-Catherine where Zoe discovers a body in an abandoned house during a bank holiday weekend. And finally we have the new book The Vineyard Murder, where Zoe is helping her friend Marcel with his grape harvest when she discovers a body in among the vines when she is arriving in the early morning. But when she returns with the local police officer the body has disappeared. The reader knows that Zoe wasn’t wrong, but she doesn’t and carries on with the harvest and getting to know the other people who have come to work on the grape harvest who are a very mixed bunch to say the least. This has got surprisingly little murder in it until very late on, but there’s still a lot of mystery going on. I think Zoe’s inquisitiveness is at it’s most unattractive in this book – I’m not sure whether you would actually like her if you only read this book, but I did like the way it dug into the personalities and rivalries of the characters. Plus it has some Ngaio Marsh references and I’m a sucker for that because you all know how much I love Inspector Alleyn!
I really love Sainte-Catherine as a setting and the descriptions of the countryside and the lifestyle of Provence are really good. I also like that Zoe is an older protagonist. She’s not retired or as obviously old as the protagonists of the Thursday Murder Club or its imitators but she isn’t a naieve twenty-something and she has a past that influences here. As I mentioned in the BotW review of the first one there seems to be a link to an earlier Greg Mosse series which I am still trying to get around to reading. Book four suggests that there may some sort of romantic thread coming towards us if the series carries on, but I actually thing it probably needs ot have another book set somewhere away from Sainte-Catherine next because there’s a limit to how many murders one small hilltop village can have and still attract tourists! That said, Zoe is already feeling anxious about the number of bodies she’s discovering, so I’m not sure stumbling across them elsewhere is going to help her with that!
Anyway – these are a nice way of passing a few hours even if they will give you a yearning for some good French food! The first three are also in Kindle Unlimited so they’re very low risk if you’re in that scheme. They’re also available on Kobo.
Have a great weekend!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 