Dressed for Death in Burgundy (A French Village Mystery)

Author:  Susan C. Shea
Genre:  Mystery

Hardcover; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781250113023
Minotaur Books
288 Pages$26.99; $12.99 Amazon
May 1, 2018

✮✮✮

After finding herself mixed up in a murder investigation the previous summer, Katherine Goff's life simply has not been the same.  Her husband has been in the US recording a new album, the Burgundy region locals are finally starting to see her as a real neighbor, and Katherine has even started helping out with "tourist" excursions.  It seems she's finally found her place in the small community of Reigny-sur-Canne.

But when Katherine stumbles across a body in the local museum during a tour, she finds herself caught up once again in a whirlwind of gossip and speculation.  When the police zero in on her friend Pippa as a suspect, Pippa and Katherine team up to find the real killer and clear her name.

However, the more clues they discover, the more the real killer wants them off the trail.  When Katherine and Pippa start receiving threats, they must decide what they are more afraid of - the police getting it wrong, or possibly becoming the killer's next targets.

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Katherine Goff, American expat who lives in a small town in France with her musician husband and pets, is trying to live a quiet life, interrupted only by the fact that her husband Michael is in the states recording an album with a famous country star.  It's getting close to Christmas, and she can't wait to have him back home for the holiday.

But all does not stay quiet for long.  While doing a favor for a friend - driving American tourists on a museum tour - she encounters the worst possible scenario.  While touring the museum, they find a dead body that turns out to be the wife of the local butcher.  While Katherine would like nothing more than to leave it behind her and allow the local gendarmes to handle it, her friend Pippa, a British aspiring writer, wants to solve the murder and use it in her novel (fictional, of course).  But when Pippa starts looking for clues, she doesn't realize that it makes her look suspicious, since she seems to be where the clues are found.

So Katherine feels the need to help her friend, albeit reluctantly, and just wants the matter settled before Michael gets home and finds out she's been digging around in another murder.  Only Pippa won't let it go, and now she's dragging Katherine's little friend Jeanette into the mix, and Katherine has no choice but to help and try and find out who wanted the butcher's wife dead...

This is the second book in the series, and I will say that it has improved over the first.  The plot was better and there weren't so many people as to be confused about who was who, which is a good thing in any book.

I did begin to wonder if these people ate anything but sausage, though.  (Their cholesterol must be sky high in France).  Every time you turned around that's all anyone was eating.  Anyway...I found this book to be darker than the first.  Winter in France in this small town was depressing; and there was really no feeling that Christmas was an enjoyable time of year.  No visiting each other's homes, no decorations, no baking, etc.  I was surprised about Katherine's financial situation, because in the first book we were given the impression that if they could just pick up and move to another country they must have had the financial means to do so, but in this book they are just struggling by and hoping Michael can make a go again of his career.  It was as I said, a surprise, to say the least.  Pippa also appears to be struggling, and since she doesn't seem to have a job, where is her income coming from? (I pay attention to details).  It may have been mentioned in the first book, but if so, it was only a sentence or two and should have been reiterated in this one.

While I would have liked to enjoy this book more, unfortunately, I didn't feel a connection with any of the characters, and that's a big plus in a book.  If you don't feel a connection, then the book doesn't have any kind of an impact on you.  Not the death, not the solving of it.  In this case, because I never really connected with Pippa or Katherine, I didn't really care about what was happening to them at any given time.  Also, there is a bit of a spoiler below, but I have hidden it.

And at the last, I was extremely disappointed in Katherine's "revelation" about Eric, and can only imagine that it was thrown in there to cause dissention in the next book: i.e., friction between Eric and Michael; Michael finding out and leaving Katherine (even temporarily); or Eric trying to make a play for Katherine. I truly hope that it is not brought up again in the next book.

Other than that, I do believe that this book has promise if the series continues; I would actually say that it was a 3-1/2 star book well on its way to four stars, especially if Katherine and Michael's financial situation continues to improve, as well as Pippa finally finding herself a published author.

https://smile.amazon.com/Dressed-Death-Burgundy-Village-Mysteries/dp/1250113024/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2376729544

More on Susan C. Shea's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/s/susan-shea/

Love and Death in Burgundy (A French Village Mystery #1)

Author:  Susan C. Shea
Genre:  Mystery

Hardcover; Digital Book; Audiobook
ISBN #:  9781250113009
Minotaur Books
272 Pages
$13.74; $2.99 Amazon
May 2, 2017

✮✮

After three years of living in the small town of Reigny-sur-Canne, all Katherine Goff really wants is to be accepted by her neighbors into their little community.  But as an American expat living in the proud region of Burgundy, that's no easy task.

When the elderly Frenchman who lives in the village chateau is found dead at the bottom of a staircase, the town is turned into a hot bed of gossip and suspicion, and Katherine suddenly finds herself drawn deeper and deeper into the the small town's secrets.  A motherless teenager, a malicious French widow, a brash music producer, and a would-be Agatha Christie are among those caught up in a storm that threatens to turn Katherine's quiet life upside down.  As more and more of the villagers' secrets are brought to light, Katherine must try to figure out who, if anyone, in the town she can trust, and which one of her neighbors just might be a killer.

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Katherine Goff is an American artist and her husband is an ex-musician who live in a small town in France.  She's tried hard for three years to be accepted by her chosen country, but hasn't been able to truly become one of them.  She does hope that her luncheon on this day will be a help.  While she's only invited the local ladies - which include two other Americans and an Englishwoman - trouble begins to brew when the husband of one of the French women arrives to pick her up and a man he hates, Yves, also shows up.

It seems Yves dropped his daughter Sophie to date another American, Penny, and the Bellegardes hate him.  When Monsieur Bellegarde arrives to pick up his wife, so does Yves, and they get into an argument which culminates in M. Bellgarde breaking a plate over Yves' head.  While it looks like a minor disaster, it soon turns into something worse.

Katherine is called from her bed in the middle of the night because M. Bellegarde is dead, apparently from a fall down the stairs.  But people begin to become suspicious, and now everyone is looking around for suspects.  But will they find the killer or will Yves become murderer by default?

Since this is a first-in-the-series book, I try to give a pass to the author.  But there were so many things that bothered me that I had a difficult time doing so.  First off, the author tells us that Katherine's husband doesn't speak any French.  Why would he want to move to a country where he doesn't speak the language?  He's been there three years and hasn't managed to pick up anything or at least get someone to teach him?  Is he going to have his wife continually translate?  Is he going to use sign language to indicate what he's interested in at market?  Is he expecting the locals to speak his language?  That in itself seemed off to me.

Then I began to wonder why, in this small town, there were so many people from other places - Katherine and her husband, an American country singer and family, a rich woman from Cleveland; and even an Englishwoman.  Is this village advertised as a haven for expatriates?

But here's the kicker where the book lost me, and almost right away (although I did continue reading)  why would you go to someone's home and take a plate from what is obviously a nice set and break it over someone else's head?  Who does that?  I can't imagine anyone who would just help themselves to someone else's dinnerware and destroy it like that - and not even apologize or offer to replace it.  Is this how the French behave?

Then there's Katherine - a weak woman if I ever saw one.  She didn't have a single strong character trait at all, and therefore was not likable and honestly I got tired of reading about Katherine going to flea sales and buying things.  Who cares where she bought her dishes or doilies?  I certainly don't.  Michael never seemed happy - it appeared he wanted to be anywhere except where he was, and I wondered why they didn't just move back to the states.

But it doesn't stop there:  There's the little problem of Jeanette, a young teenager who has a habit of stealing, even from the mouth that feeds her.  She not only steals from Katherine, she plays her for a fool and spies on people...and there's no consequences for her at all; nada, nothing.  Saying her father was a thief or that she had no mother doesn't make it alright.  Why didn't she get in trouble for her actions?  Who would want someone like her around them?  I'd put a mile wide fence around my house if it meant keeping my possessions.

There's a couple more things that bother me, including my feeling about the ending, but since I didn't want to give it away, I put it in a spoiler below:

I also got the feeling that Yves is nothing more than a gigolo: he dumps Sophie to date Penny, the rich American, and then when Sophie's father dies, obviously leaving everything to her, he goes back to her. It seems to me he only wants to follow the money and not the woman. As for the ending, it wasn't even a true mystery, since there wasn't a true murder. It seemed like the author took a cop out because she didn't want any of her characters to be 'guilty'.

All in all, I hope in the next book Katherine will have gained a backbone and actually not be afraid to stand up to people and treat her husband a little bit better than she does.  I will read the next in the series to see if it has improved.
 
https://www.amazon.com/Love-Death-Burgundy-Village-Mysteries/dp/1250113008/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2375633528

More on Susan C. Shea's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/s/susan-shea/