A Souffle of Suspicion (A French Bistro Mystery #2)

Author:  Daryl Wood Gerber
Genre:  Mystery

Hardcover; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781683315865
Crooked Lane Books
325 Pages
$25.25; $9.99 Amazon
July 10, 2018

✮✮✮✮

Crush Week in Nouvelle Vie is a madhouse - in a good way.  Tourists pour into town for the pressing of the Napa Valley's world-renowned grapes, and all the town's businesses gets a nice lift, including Bistro and Maison Rousseau.  Mimi is raising the ante this year with a Sweet Treats Festival, a wonderland of croissants, cakes, tarts, and soufflés crafted with expert care by the area's top talents.

Chef Camille's sister, Renee, is managing the festival with a cast-iron fist, upsetting everyone, including her sister - which is bad for Camille when Renee turns up dead in the chef's kitchen.  Mimi is still building her business, so her first course of action is to whip up answers and catch the unsavory perpetrator before Camille takes a dusting and gets burned.

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Mimi Rousseau owns an inn and bistro in Nouvelle Vie, California.  It is crush week, and tourists are filling the town, also to participate in the first-ever Sweet Treats Festival, being run by Chef Camille's sister Renee, who has left her husband to manage the festival.  Everything seems to be going fine, but then problems begin to arise - arguments between Renee and others; Renee's husband Rusty showing up and wanting her to come home again.

While Mimi isn't really concerned, that all changes when she receives a phone call from Camille and arrives at Camille's home to find Renee dead.  Camille is cleared of the crime shortly, but that still leaves plenty of suspects - and most of them are connected to the festival in one way or another.  Will Mimi be able to keep her bistro up and running with a killer on the loose?  Or will someone else be a target - including Mimi herself?

This is the second book in the French Bistro series, and as such I felt it was an improvement over the first.  The characters are better developed, and Mimi is finally finding her footing in her new venture and in her relationship with Nash, the ex-wine salesman who is now managing her mother's vineyard.

However, Nash's ex-wife Willow is trying to throw a wrench into the works as it were, and Mimi doesn't do a lot to stop her yet wondering how to deal with it.  She rather avoids the situation instead of confronting it head on, which makes her a contradiction of sorts since she has no problem confronting people about their alibis at the time of the murder and then verifying if they are telling the truth.  It's a little confusing how she'll confront possible murderers but not her boyfriend's ex-wife.  She says as how she likes Mimi, but since Willow is trying to break up her relationship with Nash it makes you wonder how Mimi thinks.  I'd be leery of someone like that, and I certainly wouldn't care for them much.

Mimi also laments how gorgeous Willow is compared to her.  Well, Willow wears makeup for one thing, and a little makeup goes a long way.  Perhaps Mimi should consider mascara, blush, lipstick (not lip gloss as these authors think all women wear, which is pretty much for preteens and teenagers) and a little eye shadow and she'd be surprised at the transformation.  (I honestly get so tired of all these protagonists 'throwing on a little lip gloss' and thinking they're hot.  Four out of five American women wear makeup every day - except in cozies - and you'd think it was an anomaly or something.  As one of those makeup-wearing women, I'd like to see at least a few of them wear more than lip gloss).  Anyway, that's just my opinion.

While her attention is focused instead on finding Renee's killer since she can see how miserable Camille is and she wants to ease her pain as much as she can, there is also a nice subplot of how Mimi is finding herself the owner of two cats who have appeared to have adopted her; and it's kind of sweet to see how she just allows the situation to continue and even sort of welcomes it when she feels she's a little nervous that the killer is getting a bit too close.

Close enough that the murderer thinks she's a threat and starts treating it as such; even though Mimi tries to brush it off, deep down she knows that someone is figuring out she's asking too many questions and isn't happy about it, and that's when things start to get interesting.

There are plenty of diversions and a lot going on, making for a very busy book indeed, but most of it is centered on the festival itself and the restaurant, leaving very little time for real clues to add up.  I enjoyed the mystery, there were plenty of red herrings, and the writing flowed at a nice pace.  However, if you pay attention the clues are there and the story was told well.

In the end everything was settled satisfactorily with all loose ties coming together nicely, and even a little bit of a teaser for the next in the series.  All in all it was an enjoyable read that makes us want to look for the next book.  There are quite a few nice recipes in the back also for those who enjoy baking (I do).  Recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Souffl%C3%A9-Suspicion-French-Bistro-Mystery/dp/1683315863/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2443336200

More on Daryl Wood Gerber's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/g/daryl-wood-gerber/

A Deadly Eclair (A French Bistro Mystery #1)

Author:  Daryl Wood Gerber
Genre:  Mystery

Hardcover; Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781683313410; 9781683316046
Crooked Lane Books
368 Pages
$18.35; $15.99; $1.99 Amazon
November 7, 2017

✮✮

It's always been Mimi Rousseau's dream to open her own bistro, but it seems beyond her grasp since she's been chased back home to Nouvelle Vie in Napa Valley by her late husband's tremendous debt.  Until her best friend Jorianne James introduces her to entrepreneur Bryan Baker who invests in promising prospects.  Now, working the bistro and inn until she's able to pay it off and call it her own, Mimi is throwing the inn's first wedding ever.

The wedding will be the talk of the town, as famous talk show host Angelica Edmonton, daughter of Bryan's half-brother, Edison, has chosen the inn as her perfect venue.  Anxious, Mimi is sure things are going to turn south, especially when Edison gets drunk and rowdy at the out-of-towners' dinner, but by the evening, things begin to look up again.  That is until six AM rolls around, and Bryan is found dead at the bistro with an éclair stuffed in his mouth.  And the fingers point at Mimi, whose entire loan is forgiven in Bryan's will.

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Mimi Rousseau is excited that the opening of her bistro is going to host a celebrity wedding - the niece of the man who funded her endeavor, Brian Baker.  When the first evening gets underway everything seems to be going swimmingly; the guests love the food and everyone seems happy with their rooms.  But the next morning the bride-to-be, Angelica Barrington, knocks furiously on Mimi's door.  She's found her Uncle Brian dead on the patio.

When Mimi hastens to see for herself, she sees that Brian is indeed deceased and when the police arrive she also learns that her cell phone was found nearby with a message for Brian to meet her.  Mimi attempts to convince Detective Tyson Daly that someone must have lifted her phone from the kitchen and she didn't send it.  While Tyson is a friend of hers, without witnesses he still has to consider her the main suspect, especially when a notarized letter is found in Brian's effects that gives Mimi full ownership of the bistro and inn in the event of his death.

But when a witness does eventually come forth that can attest to her whereabouts and she is cleared of the crime, there is still the matter of a killer lurking somewhere on her premises and it could be any one of the numerous people who were told they can't leave until he or she is found.  With a hotel full of suspects and a wedding put on hold, Mimi wants the murder of her friend solved - and soon.

I liked the premise of this book and really wanted to love it.  Unfortunately, I didn't.  I just didn't like Mimi at all; and one really needs to like the main character in order to like the book.  She tells the investigating homicide detective - Tyson Daly, a friend from childhood - that's it's her civic duty to discover the killer, but no, it's not.  It's his duty.  I understand that we want our protagonist to discover the murderer; after all, that's why we read the books, but Mimi is out-and-out obnoxious to people.  She's a get-in-your-face type of person when she asks questions.  She asks people where they were, checks on their alibis, and then confronts them again and demands they tell her the truth - even when it angers them.  Does she not realize one of these people is a killer?  It's rather difficult to like a protagonist who acts like this.  She hounds people constantly - and tells them it's all in the name of wanting to find her mentor's killer.  But isn't that Tyson's job?

It's one thing to overhear conversations, it's entirely another to corner people and harass them until they start yelling at you and threatening you.  This isn't mere curiosity, as she says; just read the conversation she has with David Ives outside the store and you'll understand.  She's basically conducting her own police interrogation without actually being an officer or in an interrogation room in a police station.  This is irresponsible.

And what does Tyson do?  He doesn't spend his time working on the case - he goes over to his mother's home and works around there, etc.  I'm pretty sure detectives don't go looking at real estate while a case is ongoing.  This guy seems like he just went into the job to impress people with the fact; Mimi is doing all the work and we never saw him question a single person - he didn't even take anyone down to the station.

I didn't feel that any of the characters were fleshed out, so we couldn't become involved with them.  There was practically nothing about Tyson, Jo, etc.; and we didn't really get to know anything about any of them.  This, of course, can be remedied in future books, so we will see.

Also, (I hope this isn't going to be a trend in future books) but I really hate it when (as the author wrote toward the end of the book) political leanings are inserted.  The only time you should read about politics is when you're reading non-fiction or a book that deals with the subject.  Fiction authors shouldn't offer their personal feelings by adding characters that will eventually insert their political beliefs into the story.  Admittedly, it was only a paragraph or two, but I got the idea that this character will be recurring in future books.  Just my opinion. 

In the end, I felt the reason for the murder was flimsy; someone would definitely have to be unhinged in the first place to imagine what the killer imagined would eventually take place.  Obviously, they didn't trust in who they were or family members or they wouldn't have even have allowed this to cross their mind.  It just didn't seem like it was a strong enough reason for murder, so was a bit of a letdown.  But, as it is the first in the series, I will read the next to see if it improves.

https://www.amazon.com/Deadly-%C3%89clair-French-Bistro-Mystery/dp/1683313410/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2073903820

More on Daryl Wood Gerber's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/g/daryl-wood-gerber/