An American in Paris #3
A Fashionably French Murder is the third novel in Colleen Cambridge’s An American in Paris series, set during the years following World War II, featuring Tabitha Knight, the fictitious best friend of Julia Child. Tabitha, the daughter of a French mother and an American police officer father, was a Rosie the Riveter during the war, and came to Paris from the Detroit suburb where she grew up, to live with her French grandfather and his life partner, Oncle Rafe. She is not a very good cook, so how lucky is she to have Julia Child as a neighbor. At the time this book takes place, in 1950, Julia is attending classes at the Cordon Bleu, the famous French cooking school, during the day, and cooking mouthwatering meals for Tabitha and her “messieurs” at night. She is teaching Tabitha to cook, even though Tabitha is still pretty hopeless in the kitchen without Julia’s help. The two previous novels in the series have introduced the reader to French food and wine. This one brings readers into the world of haute couture.
As the novel begins, Julia is teaching Tabitha to make potato leek soup (one of my favorites–I could taste it as I was reading). Tabitha, who gives French lessons to Americans in Paris, and translates for them when needed, receives an invitation from a diplomat’s wife, who does not speak French, to translate for her at a fashion show at a relatively new designer’s studio. This is the time when Christian Dior has introduced the “New Look” with bright colors, long, full skirts, and narrow waistlines, and all the other fashion houses hope to compete with him.
In the first few chapters, you learn many details about French fashion of the time. The women who model the dresses are called mannequins, while the clothing samples they wear are called models. A “model,” as a person, is someone who poses for an artist. Tabitha’s client chooses one of the gorgeous dresses, only to find out that the designer had thought she was going to wear it in America, instead of Paris, and that someone else in Paris had already ordered the same dress. In the world of haute couture, dresses were meant to be unique, and only one person could wear a certain dress in a certain geographical area. So Tabitha’s client goes home empty-handed.
Tabitha realizes she has lost her glove in the atelier, and returns, only to find the dead body of designer Madame Lannet. As her sometime love interest, sometime nemesis Inspecteur Merveille points out, Tabitha has a talent for finding dead bodies. The designer has been strangled with a piece of lace, and the killer is still in the house, and hits Tabitha from behind, so she doesn’t see the killer’s face. Then the murderer escapes through the courtyard. The chief saleswoman, who as it turns out is Madame Lannet’s lover, improbably accuses Dior of killing her.
The next day, there is a break-in at a shoe shop that shares the courtyard with the fashion house. Mathilde, a new friend of Tabitha’s calls her onto the scene because Tabitha has acquired a reputation for solving crimes and, as even Inspecteur Merveille recognizes, women are more willing to talk to her than to the police. Mathilde is a friend of the mannequins from Maison Lannet. One of them is Lisette, a hair stylist, and Tabitha had hoped to get her hair cut in a new, fashionably short style she had admired on the mannequin. Lisette agrees, but she has left her scissors at Maison Lannet. When they return to the fashion house to retrieve them, Tabitha finds yet another dead body: the chief saleswoman, Madame Lannet’s lover, stabbed to death with a pair of scissors.
Inspecteur Merveille is called in to investigate, and Tabitha helps him, whether he likes it or not. He is beginning to appreciate her talents as an investigator, even though he still thinks murder investigation should be left to the police. Tabitha admits her own attraction to him, but she thinks he is unavailable. In the previous book, she saw a picture of his fiancée at his desk. Now the picture is gone, with no explanation. Clearly, there is a story about Merveille and his fiancée, which we don’t know yet, and which is not explained in this book. Have they broken up? Julia encourages Tabitha to pursue her relationship with Merveille. She is very happily married to her husband, Paul, and she wants Tabitha to be as happily married as she is.
The crimes have ties to the Nazi occupation of Paris, and who was, and who was not, a collaborator. Tabitha, who spent the war years in the relative safety of a Detroit suburb, has come to realize how traumatic the war was for the people of Paris. There are many shades of gray in what the Parisians did during the war. Some were outright collaborators, some were Resistance fighters, and others did what they could to survive. Some pretended to cooperate with the Nazis, while secretly aiding the Resistance. Christian Dior was one of those, we learn, while his sister Catherine led a Resistance network. The book makes you want to read more about Catherine Dior and the Resistance fighters who worked for her.
Tabitha’s “messieurs” are at odds with each other for the first time in the series. They have bought a restaurant that was closed during the war, and they plan to reopen it soon, and insist that Tabitha wear a Dior gown to the grand opening. But they argue about the color scheme for the restaurant, and, as Tabitha finds out, their argument actually goes deeper, and has to do with their activities during the war. Oncle Rafe was always a member of the Resistance, even though he won’t talk about what he actually did, but Tabitha’s grandfather, a banker, pretended to work with the Germans while secretly sending money to the Resistance. So, some people view him as a collaborator, even though his heart was always with the Resistance. As the investigation deepens, the wartime activities of the victims and the suspects come to light, and the two men are forced to recall experiences they would rather forget, and which create tension between them.
The main suspect is the man who financed Madame Lannet, who used to work for Dior, when she opened her own fashion house. He was most likely a collaborator during the war, and Tabitha wonders if Madame Lannet knew something about his activities, and blackmailed him into helping her instead of a more talented designer. Another suspect is the designer who thinks he, instead of Madame Lannet, should have received the investor’s help in opening a house. Neither suspect seems to have a motive for killing the chief saleswoman, though. Both think she wasn’t worth their attention. Tabitha realizes someone else must have a motive that she doesn’t know about.
There is a delightful subplot about an alley cat who saved Tabitha’s life in a previous book. Here she finds the cat, who lives near the police station, sick and injured. She takes the very reluctant cat to a young veterinarian and hopes to take the cat home with her, even though Oncle Rafe’s dog Oscar Wilde and, especially, her grandfather’s cat Madame X, will not be happy. There is an attraction between Tabitha and the veterinarian, who asks her out on a date, even though she can’t deny her feelings for Merveille. I am sure this is the beginning of a love triangle, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out in future books.
A Fashionably French Murder, like the previous books in the series, is an absolute delight. I love the way Cambridge brings postwar Paris alive for the reader. Her descriptions of Dior gowns are breathtaking. Yes, Tabitha finally gets her viewing at Maison Dior, and asserts herself after her “messieurs” argue about which gown she will wear. Julia’s cooking, as in the other two books, is described in mouthwatering detail. Here, among other dishes, besides the previously mentioned potato leek soup, she makes, or helps Tabitha make, buttery croissants, crêpes, and cassoulet. This is a wonderful series, and I am looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Tabitha, and which delicious meals Julia will make in the next book. — Vicki Kondelik
Editor’s note: to discover more about Dior and what the war was like for him and his sister (the inspiration for “Miss Dior” perfume), I recommend the series “The New Look” on Apple TV+.