THE MURDEROUS MACARON

A pastry chef in the south of France turns into an amateur sleuth in this debut novel.

Following a stressful divorce, Julie Cavallo has left the hustle of Paris to open a small patisserie in her hometown, the fictional village of Beldoc in Provence. But the locals have yet to develop a taste for Julie’s gluten-free recipes, and, making matters worse, a local man named Maurice Sauve has dropped dead during one of her cooking classes. The police do not suspect foul play, but Julie has one of her “snapshots,” a potentially psychic hallucination, leading her to believe that someone put something dangerous in Maurice’s drink. When Rose, Julie’s unconventional grandmother, suggests that the chef start looking into the dead man’s past to put her mind at ease, she starts questioning his family and paying attention to the small town’s gossip about Maurice’s failed marriage. Just as the list of suspects and potentially poisonous plants starts to climb, Maurice’s ex-wife suddenly dies and someone leaves a threatening note at the bakery. With the help of her sous chef, a post-millennial named Eric Dol, and her cultured younger sister, Flo, Julie tries to stop the killer and save her fledgling business. In the same lighthearted vein as Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who… mysteries, Drew’s series opener is a rather charming and airy affair. With relatively little action and the first death happening before the book’s opening, the story’s momentum relies on its colorful cast of supporting characters—especially the fabulous Rose, who runs a “doga” class (yoga with dogs)—rather than suspense. But Julie and her team seem out of place with their trendy tastes in the tale’s perplexing Provencal setting. The mystery reaches a satisfying conclusion, but aside from a few bonjours and mentions of lavender, the rich locale adds disappointingly little flavor along the way.

A sweet mystery with a gorgeous but underused setting.