Murder Visits a French Village
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
"Not since my first visit to Louise Penny's Three Pines, have I encountered a more beguiling fictional world than Susan C. Shea's Reigny-Sur-Cannes" Catriona McPherson, award-winning author on Dressed for Death in Burgundy
Ariel Shepard is devastated by the sudden loss of her husband, but nothing could have prepared her for inheriting the rundown French château they'd visited on their honeymoon four years ago. With finances tight she has no choice but to swap her Manhattan apartment and city lifestyle for a renovation project in a peaceful French village.
When Ariel hires an expert to help her uncover the legacy of her beautiful ruin, life only becomes more complicated. Christiane, the historian, is found dead in the moat, and although the local police aren't suspicious, Ariel is. She joins two other ex-pats, Pippa and Katherine, to investigate, but with plenty of workmen - and errant tools - around the château, many people had the means, but who had the motive? Why would anyone want to kill a historian?
Ariel begins to suspect that her French village life will be anything but peaceful! Can she solve the suspicious murder and make her château in Burgundy the perfect new home?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Shea's uneven third French Village mystery (after 2018's Dressed for Death in Burgundy), New Yorker Ariel Shepard is reeling from her husband's sudden death and his lawyer's revelation that he purchased a dilapidated 19th-century French chateau in Noyers-sur-Serein as a surprise for her. Coping with eccentric workmen there, mounting maintenance problems, and bat and rat challenges, she's happy to make new friends: British mystery writer Pippa Hathaway and U.S. expatriate Katherine Goff, as well as historian Christiane Breton, who begins to delve into the chateau's past. Christiane dies in what appears to be a fall at the chateau, but the death looks suspicious, and Pippa, Katherine, and Ariel vow to find out more despite police hostility to meddling amateurs and danger to Christiane's husband. Alert readers will quickly cotton on to the perpetrator and may become a little impatient with the oblivious Ariel. However, the colorful locals, as well as the rich culinary and cultural ambiance, show promise. Hopefully, Shea will do better next time.
