An American in Paris #2
A Murder Most French is the second book in Colleen Cambridge’s delightful American in Paris Mystery series featuring Tabitha Knight, the fictitious best friend of Julia Child. The book is set in 1950, as Paris is recovering from World War II and the German occupation. Tabitha, the daughter of an American police officer father and a French mother, grew up in a Detroit suburb and was a Rosie the Riveter during the war. In the first book in the series, Mastering the Art of French Murder, she accepted an invitation to go to Paris to stay with her maternal grandfather and his partner, Oncle Rafe. Tabitha loves her two “messieurs,” but she is not a good cook and is unable to make the French meals they love. Very luckily for her, she becomes friends with her neighbor, none other than Julia Child, and learns to cook under her direction. Without Julia, however, Tabitha is still hopeless in the kitchen. Julia loves to use the spacious kitchen in Tabitha’s grandfather’s mansion, which is much larger than her own tiny kitchen, so she often comes to the house to cook, and everyone gets a delicious meal.
As this novel opens, Julia is taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, Paris’ prestigious cooking school. In the afternoons, famous chefs often give demonstrations for the public, and Julia invites Tabitha to one such demonstration, by a chef who ran a restaurant that closed during the occupation. At the end of the demonstration, the chef collapses and dies after drinking wine from a rare vintage, which came from a bottle that a delivery boy had given to Tabitha to give to him. Police inspector Merveille arrives on the scene and determines that the bottle was poisoned with cyanide. But how did the cyanide get into the bottle? Everyone at the demonstration had seen the chef uncork it, and he would have known if the cork had been replaced. Tabitha knows the murderer must have been in the room, because the gift card that came with the bottle cannot be found at the scene, and she figures the killer must have taken it.
Shortly after this first murder, Julia and Tabitha attend a meeting of a wine club, where another chef drops dead, also after drinking a rare vintage wine. Tabitha feels guilty because she thinks she should have warned the chef before he opened the bottle, but, as others tell her, no one would have believed her. As far as anyone knows, she and Julia were the only ones present at both murders, but, of course, Tabitha realizes someone else must have been there–the killer. Could the murderer have come in disguise?
Then the case gets very personal when a poisoned bottle of wine is sent to Tabitha’s grandfather and Oncle Rafe, but, luckily, they figure out that it’s poisoned before anything happens. The police detective, Merveille, warns Tabitha not to get involved in the investigation. She had worked with him on a previous case, and almost lost her life. He doesn’t want that to happen again. Julia teases Tabitha about her feelings for Merveille, but she denies that these feelings exist, and insists that she doesn’t need a man in her life. Julia, who is very happy with her husband Paul, wants Tabitha to be happy as well. Tabitha finds out Merveille is engaged, but I have a feeling there’s more to it than that, and we will find out more in future books. She is undeniably upset when she learns of his engagement, so, as much as she’d like to deny it, she does have feelings for him. There is also a second potential love interest, an American man who comes to the wine tasting but prefers Coca-Cola to wine. The French, who, of course, treasure their wine, have not taken to Coca-Cola.
At first Tabitha thinks the only possible suspect is the estranged wife of the second chef who was poisoned. He had left Paris during the war, during which time his wife had taken a young lover, giving her a motive to kill her husband. For reasons I won’t get into because it would be a spoiler, she is quickly ruled out as a suspect, and Tabitha realizes the roots of the murder go back to the restaurant where both victims were chefs, and which the second victim wanted to reopen. This restaurant is located near the marketplace where Tabitha and Julia love to shop. Several stalls in the marketplace had been vandalized before the murders happened, and Tabitha wonders if there’s a connection. Tabitha’s grandfather had helped to finance the restaurant, so she figures that was why the poisoned bottle was sent to him. (Or was it meant for her all along, as Merveille suggests?)
The trail of clues takes Tabitha to the catacombs, where several truly creepy scenes take place. A mushroom vendor grows his crop in the catacombs, and a mead seller ferments honey there. We also learn the fascinating history of secret stores of wine hidden away from the Nazis during World War II. The Nazis stole rare vintages of wine, just as they stole art treasures, and the French vintners and restaurant owners would hide the wine away in secret cellars, or disguise less valuable bottles as more valuable ones, sometimes even rubbing dust on the bottles to make them look older. As Colleen Cambridge explains in her author’s note, we don’t know for certain that the catacombs were used to hide wine from the Nazis, but it seems like a natural hiding place.
A Murder Most French is a delightful addition to this charming new series. The reader experiences the sights and sounds and, above all, the tastes, of postwar Paris along with Tabitha. But what really makes the series stand out is, of course, Julia Child and her cooking. Her larger-than-life personality and culinary genius are brought to life in these books. The series takes place long before she began her famous television show, but she is trying to decide what to do after finishing her course at the Cordon Bleu, and teaching cooking to others is one of the possibilities in her mind. Julia’s outgoing personality and Tabitha’s quieter nature complement each other very well. I could almost taste the meals Julia cooks as I was reading the book. I am looking forward to future volumes in the series, and to seeing which meals Julia Child will cook next. — Vicki Kondelik