Book Review: Death in Avignon by Serena Kent

 

Death in Avignon

by Serena Kent

This is a murder mystery, people die, but somehow it is once of the most relaxing genres I know and this is a prime example. 

I listen to a podcast called Shedunnit, created by Caroline Crampton, and I remember her talking about how mysteries were so popular post WWI because they were predictable. You knew the resolution would arrive and the detective would win through. It was just a matter of how. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy them so much. I really enjoy a good puzzle too, like Soduku, it’s very satisfying to finish something like that.

I admit I’m not one of those people who are able to follow all the clues and arrive at the solution to the puzzle before the author reveals it. I’m just along for the ride. So I can’t evaluate it on that criteria. I can only say, I didn’t really see the resolution coming.

This is the second book in this series and I so enjoyed the first, that I bought this one as soon as it was available. The main character is Penelope Keet – a retired ex-pat from Great Britain living in France. She worked for the Home Office and assisted the Coroner.

The mystery begins when Penny goes to an art show and the painter, Don Doncaster, who Penny doesn’t really like right off, collapses. He is taken to hospital and seems to be improving. They find he was poisoned. Then he takes a nose dive and dies. He isn’t the only one to die in this book, and all the deaths seem centered around the art world that Penny has just been introduced to.

She isn’t alone in her investigation – she has her new friends, like the handsome mayor Laurent, who she never seems to manage to have a dinner alone with, and the real estate agent, Clémence, who is a truly chic French woman.

When Clémence had left, Penelope went back to her Rachmaninov. But it failed to catch fire or to calm her conflicting emotions. Much as she had come to like her, seeing Clémence still made her feel inadequate.

They are intimately involved with the mystery as one of their friends, who is an art expert, disappears. Is he under suspicion? Laurent and Clémence take significant umbrage at the suggestion.

There are new friends here too, as Penny meets people in the art world and the music world of the nearby communities. Plus, her brash old friend from Britain, Frankie, returns.

The conversations flow naturally, and the descriptions are often lovely.

As the road climbed, the curves and wind-sculpted stacks of red soil emerged from the pines like a fifties actress letting a fur slip from her bare shoulders.

There are little bits of reality that one can relate to, as well.

After all the years of marriage and motherhood, it still felt self-indulgent simply to eat what she wanted, when she wanted, with no one else to please, or cajole, or disappoint.

I think my favorite parts of this book aren’t even necessarily the puzzle, but the relationships between characters we meet, and the descriptions of the countryside and setting.

There is a large cast in this book, but they are introduced at a reasonable pace and differentiated so that one can keep track. Plus, some are familiar from the first book and some are new.

For a relaxing puzzle mystery, I highly recommend this series. It began with Death in Provence and you can read my review of that one here http://storymusing.blogspot.com/2021/04/book-review-death-in-provence-by-serena.html