This is the second book in the Follet Valley mystery series, which my husband got into earlier this year. When he read Death and Fromage, he laughed out loud so much that companionable reading was certainly a noisy experience! Of the first two books, he felt the second one was the best, and that someone new to the series could dive into it at this juncture. I needed a light and funny read, as recently I have been struggling to pick books, as some less good reads have derailed my reading mojo a bit.
Synopsis
‘Richard is a middle-aged Englishman who runs a B&B in the Vallée de Follet. Nothing ever happens to Richard, and really that’s the way he likes it. Until scandal erupts in the nearby town of Saint-Sauver when its famous restaurant is downgraded from three ‘Michelin’ stars to two. The restaurant is shamed, the town is in shock and the leading goat’s cheese supplier drowns himself in one of his own pasteurisation tanks. Or does he? Valérie d’Orçay, who staying at the B&B while house-hunting in the area, isn’t convinced that it’s a suicide. Despite his misgivings, Richard is drawn into Valérie’s investigation, and finds himself becoming a major player.’
Overall Thoughts
I thought the novel started well, as the way it draws you in, has quite a cinematic quality (which makes sense given the main character’s love and knowledge of old films):
‘Richard Ainsworth was out of his depth and out of his comfort zone. Also, if he carried on drinking this excellent Sauvignon Blanc at his current rate, he’d likely be out of his box too. A tasting menu soiree to celebrate the opening of the Les Gens Qui Mangent restaurant, coinciding with the promised return of Valéried’Orçay, had seemed too good to be true. And so it has proved. So, now Richard sat conspicuously alone at a table for two, surrounded by every local bigwig within a fifty-kilometre radius in the Follet Valley looking, as Humphrey Bogard had put it so eloquently in Casablanca, ‘like a man who’d had his insides kicked out.’
The way this scene description begins centred on the person and their immediate surroundings, before zooming out to take in the whole restaurant, before returning to a closeup on the person and their discomfort, put me in mind of camera shots. I also enjoyed the author’s description of Richard’s waiter who ‘was on him quicker than wasp at a picnic’.
There is also some fun with language and imagery when it comes to considering an English person within another culture, such as when the waiter identifies Richard as English:
‘How had he even known that he was English? It wasn’t as if Richard went about the place with a bowler hat on his head and a pot of tea at his side. He’d even made a huge effort with the language since he’d moved to France and was just the right side of fluent, knowing that a full-blown multilinguist is never quite trusted, especially an English one […] Richard suspected that it wasn’t necessarily his appearance that gave his Englishness away, but a vibe, a sensibility, a very definable quality that made him different from all the French people in the room. It was an awkwardness of the high-end cuisine restaurant environment that betrayed his roots; whereas the French accepted it naturally and behaved as if it were their birthright, Richard felt out of place, unworthy of his surroundings almost, an imposter about to be unmasked. Put bluntly, Richard’s Englishness stood out like a battered saveloy on a bed of gratin dauphinois.’
I think the opening chapter demonstrates the author’s ability to craft enjoyable turns of phrase and I felt the restaurant setting was a good choice for introducing characters, in a way which is non-repetitious for those who have already read the first book in the series. Another description I particularly enjoyed was of the food critic, Auguste Tatillon, who it is said would have ‘resembled an evacuee if it wasn’t for the detached, high-handed air; the cold look on his face […] if a stern teacher let down by a star pupil.’
Whilst the plot does pivot around Richard and his life, he is not the most dominant amateur sleuth in the story, that role goes toValérie d’Orçay who he met in the first book. She is a bounty hunter of sorts and is ‘an expert in guns, hand-to-hand combat, high fashion, sports cars and the relentless pursuit of debtors, runaway husbands and criminals […]’ She also has a chihuahua called Passportout. Valérie is very much a character who injects fun, chaos and unpredictability into the plot and helps to bring out Richard’s more comically clumsy side, such as when he manages to get a man’s toupee stuck to his hand (very much a Miranda-Hart-esque awkward moment). It is not surprising that humour bubbles throughout the prose, given the author’s experience in standup comedy and one particular comic highlight is Tatillon’s review of Les Gens Qui Mangent restaurant. Hilarious for the reader, but not so great if you are the chef in question.
I think Richard and Valérie make a good sleuthing team, personality wise, as where Valérie wildly jumps in, Richard is more awkwardly cautious: ‘Valérie was trying to formulate a plan based on what was in front of her while Richard, despite his wild talk, wished they had arrived with a plan in the first place, discussed it, printed out a few copies and maybe even had a dry run.’ Nevertheless, I would not say the sleuthing gets going quickly, nor would I say it is consistently active. In the beginning this did not matter so much, but later I feel it had a negative impact on the pacing.
An aspect of the plot which dilutes the sleuthing is the fact that at short notice Richard’s wife (they’re separated) is coming to visit, along with their daughter and her husband. Regarding this narrative thread you can see the comedy being set up, in the manner of pins in a bowling alley, particularly in respect to how Richard’s wife and Valérie will react to one another. A passage I found amusing was when the two women arrive for breakfast (it is a B&B setup):
‘Some men might have reacted to this with a sense of flattery, that he was the centre of attention between two beautiful women, chihuahuas notwithstanding. Richard wasn’t one of those men, and if a CT scan of his brain had been available at that moment it may have resembled Edvard Munch’s The Scream.’
However, for me, and every reader’s mileage will be different, Richard’s personal life dominates the plot too much, slowing it down. as even when a second death occurs around page 140, Richard, Valérie and the police are not much further forward than when they saw the crime scene many chapters previously. The sleuths, amateur and professional, have vague ideas concerning infidelity and parentage, but this element is dragged out too much, in place of new and fresh evidence about the investigations.
One sleuthing scene which I enjoyed was when Richard pedals too quickly to catchup with some suspects, who are on pedalos, so he can overhear them. He is meant to be having a romantic time with his wife:
‘If Clare had imagined Richard’s apparent impetuosity was the prelude to a potentially tranquil interlude drifting along the River Follet, she quickly became aware that it wasn’t. In their student days they had spent dreamy afternoons together doing exactly that, rowing around the lakes at Keele University and planning a successful future together. Now, though, Richard was most certainly distracted and pedalling like a professional cyclist trying to break free of the peloton.’
Nevertheless, because this is a comic crime novel, some of the developments are easy to anticipate. Moreover, there are some clues which we as readers are not allowed to examine ourselves, such as the notebook. The significance of its contents has to be explained to us, rather than being something we can work out. This telling rather showing style is further sustained when Valérie disappears to Paris for two days. What she did there has to be told to us afterwards, whilst Richard does not contribute much to the overall mystery in the meantime. In the end a trap must be set for the killer, and I felt the denouement overall was too drawn out. Personally, I think the reveal scene needed to be shorter, as did the book as a whole. Much tighter plotting was needed. I think this is a series you come back to for the characters and the comedy, rather than the mystery aspect.
Rating: 4/5