“Join bookshop owner Flora Steele and handsome writer Jack Carrington as they set off on a French adventure and solve a chilling crime!”
- Book: Murder In A French Village (Flora Steele Mystery #7)
- Location: Provence, Sussex
- Author: Merryn Allingham
I just said au revoir to one Jack and in the very next book on my TBR pile, I am bidding bonjour to another. In fact, such is the coincidence that in another life, they may well have known one another! Jack Harman and Stella Darnell amateur detectives of slightly more mature years, who solve crime in the present day, hail from Sussex; as do Jack Carrington and Flora Steele amateur sleuths from the 1950s and of a slightly younger generation, but who also seem to find murder around just about every corner. Add to that, Jack Carrington is an up and coming murder/mystery author and Flora Steele owns and runs a bookshop and you have the ideal couple for any avid and addicted reader of the genre.
Either way, four of my favourite detectives and two fantastic murder mystery authors back-to-back – I am one ‘happy bunny’!
…
It is 1957 in the fictional, quiet Sussex village of Abbeymead. Mystery writer Jack Carrington and bookshop owner Flora Steele, are going about their everyday lives, not a murder in sight to be solved; when out of the blue, Jack receives a desperate message from his mother who is currently living in France, saying that she believes her life to be in danger and she needs her son’s help urgently. There has never been any love lost between Jack and either of his parents, who on their divorce, had both abandoned him as a young child, to the tender mercies of the boarding school system. Flora too, had had a traumatic childhood, although this was as a result of her parents death in a car crash, with Flora having being raised in Abbeymead by her aunt, the previous owner of the bookshop. For Flora however, there had been no closure following her loss, as there had been conflicting reports about exactly where her parents had been buried and she had yet to find their graves, although one rumour had it that they were to be found in a cemetery in rural Provence, France.
Flouting the social mores and conventions of the times, Jack and Flora decide to try and bring about a conclusion their individual unsolved family mysteries and resolve to go to France together, with the aims of helping Jack’s mother Sybil out of whatever mess she has managed to get herself into, laying ghosts to rest for Flora, as well as enjoying a short break together. This will be the first time Jack has seen his mother in many years and after just a few minutes of being reunited, he was almost wishing that he hadn’t agreed to make the trip to Paris, where she is convinced that her friend’s death was in fact murder and that she herself had been the intended victim. However, when another ‘accident’ happens, Jacks reads between the bouts of hysteria and ingratitude that he hasn’t solved the crime within the first twenty four hours of them being there, and realises that his mother might indeed be in real danger.
Sybil’s latest beau is an Italian Count, who owns a sumptuous chateau in the beautiful region of Provence, so Jack suggests that all three of them regroup there, to try and discover who is targeting Sybil and what can be done to call them to account. The Count dutifully welcomes Jack and Flora into his home, although it is abundantly clear that the family, an ex-wife and two daughters, he has from his first marriage, neither approve of them, or Sybil, making their displeasure clear for all to see. When another body is discovered and not only Sybil, but Flora herself, is threatened, Jack decides that things have gone on for long enough and he urgently needs to draw their unknown assailant out into the open, whilst at the same time protecting Flora, who he now realises is the one for him, if she will have him.
However, when Flora, by now free of much of the burden of guilt and uncertainty she has carried with her since childhood, learns that Jack intends to pack her off home to England for her own safety, she is furious about being left out of the final showdown with a murderer for the first time ever, and all of Jack’s best laid plans look about to be torn asunder.
Is this destined to be Jack and Flora’s swansong being played out on foreign soil, or will their friends back home yet have cause for celebration?
…
I know that I begin my review of each new story in this series, by saying that it is better than the last. However, ‘Murder In A French Village’, is for me, the best yet and author Merryn Allingham is really going to have to pull the proverbial “rabbit out of the hat” to come up with a storyline to top it, although she does have an ace up her sleeve as a good starting point for a premise, but you’ll need to read this book until the very end to discover what it might be.
The lovely cover art of this book immediately captured my attention, which is not perhaps what I should be basing my thoughts around, but in this instance it only added to the overall integrity of the premise. The chapters are, as usual, short, punchy and well signposted, perfect for all those times when I needed to take a break in my reading, although believe me, I really didn’t want to put this book down for even a second. The storyline was well constructed, with all the usual twists and turns and red herrings I have come to expect from a ‘Flora Steele’ mystery, and then some! The suspect list was lengthy, which at one point seemed to be quite overwhelming for Flora, who without Jack’s steadying hand, might well have given up on the case. I must admit that I worked out who one of the perpetrators was quite early on, but I was totally unprepared for the final sting in the tail and the journey was almost as good as arriving at the final conclusion, as Flora’s thought processes were often quite quirky and unpredictable, making her, most unusually, a little unsure of herself and vulnerable, which only added that perfectly engaging touch to the storyline.
Flora and Jack are really beginning to own their characters with increasing confidence and their shared love of solving a good murder/mystery is apparent as the personal relationship between them grows exponentially with each new case they work on together. This time, it was great to be able to share more intimate details of their family backgrounds, which have hitherto been one of the stumbling blocks preventing them from being able to move forward and openly declare the feelings they have for one another. As a side effect, this storyline explores and lays to rest the trauma which childhood abandonment (however deeply and subliminally buried) by ones family can cause, either through the mystery surrounding an unexpected death, or the very intentional result of being used as a pawn in a marriage breakdown. The space which being away from their usual busy home life environment has given them, means that these issues could be fully explored, reconciled and laid to rest, enabling them to have a much clearer perspective on their lives going forward, strengthening their connection, not only with each other, but with me too.
Merryn did an excellent job of making the rest of the characters on the French side of the Channel, (including Jack’s mother) to a person, the most selfish, unlikable and demanding people I could wish to never meet. The malevolent and duplicitous family dynamics were something to behold and the many complicit and unreliable cast of extras, made them as a collective, totally unauthentic and completely lacking in any morals, not people I could relate to or invest in, that’s for sure.
The ‘regular’ inhabitants of Abbeymead, were just as effusively welcoming as always, cementing Jack and Flora’s belief that returning home to this idyllic place, surrounded by so many friends who love and care about them, is just where they are destined and indeed, want to be, for the foreseeable future. I am never sure whether living in such a small and insular community where my private business would never be my own, would be outweighed by the benefits of being amongst folk who genuinely cared about me and would look out for my welfare, as I would learn to theirs.
For most of this story Jack and Flora are based in France, at first in Paris, but then moving to a beautiful chateau in Provence. The locations on the far side of the Channel are all real and made for some excellent research opportunities, for this confirmed ‘armchair traveller’, although the couple’s English home village of Abbeymead in Sussex, is as always, fictional. However, all locations are wonderfully described and totally immersive, as author Merryn Allingham definitely knows how to take full advantage of the palette of words at her disposal to make me feel that I am part of the journey alongside our intrepid duo, and she has certainly done it in style this time. Bravo!!
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