Book Review - Toujours Dead

Toujours Dead
by Susan Kiernan-Lewis
Abdale Books, 2001
420 pages, $13.95
ISBN 0970671601

Maggie Newberry and her French boyfriend Laurent Dernier are taking a year off from their jobs and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Laurent has inherited a house and vineyard in the tiny Provencal village of St-Buvard. Laurent has learned all he can about grapes and wine-growing with the intention of working the vineyard and then selling the property after the year is over.

St-Buvard is a small quaint village. The house, Domaine St-Buvard, is a lovely old farmhouse. Maggie and Laurent meet their new neighbors, Jean-Luc Alexandre and Eduard and Danielle Marceau, also vineyard owners. They meet Madame Renoir, the baker, and Madame Dulcie, the butcher's wife. And to Maggie's relief, they also meet Americans, Connor MacKenzie, an outrageous and wealthy artist, as well as Grace and Windsor Van Sant, the wealthy owners of a beautiful chateau and parents of four-year-old Taylor.

It is Connor that tells Laurent and Maggie about the Fitzpatrick family massacre fifty years earlier. An English couple and their two small children were brutally shot on the terrace of Domaine St-Buvard.

While Laurent gets involved with grape harvesting and wine-making, Maggie, at loose ends, becomes good friends with Grace and fascinated with the fifty-year-old murders. A gypsy was hung for the crime hours after it was discovered. Wrongfully since the village's Resistance hero, Patrick Alexandre, had confessed to the crime and was imprisoned for it.

Laurent and Maggie run into their own share of problems. It appears that someone is trying to convince Laurent to sell the vineyard sooner rather than later. The unidentified person is going to great lengths to get the message across. Then, on Thanksgiving Day, a dead body is discovered in their wine cellar. An arrest is made but Maggie is less than convinced that the murderer has been caught. And if that is true, then the murderer is still at large.

This is a wonderful story, nicely paced so that the reader savours not only the mystery but also life in a small French village and the building of friendship. The descriptions are vivid, evoking the sights, tastes, smells, and sounds of Provencal France. This is a book that will be enjoyed by mystery lovers and Francophiles alike.

The next Maggie Newberry book, Murder in Provence, is due out in spring of 2002.

Take a look at an interview with Susan Kiernan-Lewis and an excerpt from her book at the Susan Kiernan-Lewis website.

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