Death and Croissants: The most hilarious murder mystery since Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club (A Follet Valley Mystery)

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They say you should not judge a book by its cover but this story is just as charming and brilliant as its cover. Richard is enjoying a quiet early retirement, running a B&B and watching old movies, but that changes when he finds a bloody handprint in one of the bedrooms and no sign of the guest. Persuaded by another guest, the glamorous Valérie Dorçay, to investigate he soon finds himself caught up in all sorts, the mafia, nudity and murder most fowl.

Richard, a middle-aged ex-pat Brit, runs a small B&B in the Loire Valley. A guest disappears mysteriously, leaving some bloodstained clues and Richard is reluctantly strongarmed into investigating by a forceful and glamorous Frenchwoman who is also a guest. It’s mildly amusing in places (with the occasional strong whiff of A Year In Provence), but I’m afraid I found it slow and rather tedious with some very laboured humour. Richard himself is an insipid protagonist which is intended to fuel a lot of the humour, but it just didn’t for me so I was left with an uninspiring character in slow, not-very-interesting story which wasn’t nearly as funny as it wanted to be. I am very partial to a light-hearted, cosy mystery, so I was very excited to hear about the brand new Follet Valley series, of which Death and Croissants is the first instalment. I shall regard the Loire Valley in a different light when I next visit. The children are still scarred from visiting too many Chateaux and really haven’t yet forgiven me, so this book recommendation will help them lay those particular ghosts to rest!! I rather liked Richard’s attempts at stoicism, with his overblown yet understated (can you do both?) approach to all things. I more or less requested this on a whim. I was looking for something similar to The Marlow Murder Club, something with preferably a lot of murders but set in a small town. Death and Croissants delivered on that front, but it turned out that the book was more interested in establishing and developing its quirky characters than in setting up an ‘unputdownable’ murder mystery.Disclaimer: Please note I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

One day, however, one of his older guests disappears, leaving behind a bloody handprint on the wallpaper. Another guest, the exotic Valérie, persuades a reluctant Richard to join her in investigating the disappearance.

Featured Reviews

Death and Croissants is such a relentless rollercoaster ride of laughs and twists, it should come with a height restriction and health warning.’ Matt Forde Death and Croissants is the first in Ian Moore's cosy mystery series featuring British expat Richard Ainsworth, the middle-aged proprietor of a chambre d'hôte (B&B) in the (fictional) Follet Valley - a "quiet corner" of the popular Loire Valley region in France. THE AUTHOR: Ian is an English stand up comedian who lives in rural France and spends most of his time travelling grumpily between the two while his family grows and his wife adopts every maladjusted animal in the area.

When his cleaner finds a man’s handprint in blood on the wall of one of the guest bedrooms Richard tries to explain it away as a child’s painting. He wants to immeadiately eradicate it. His cleaner (eye roll please) Madame Tablier and his new guest, Valérie d’Orçay,an elegant and seemingly languid woman won’t hear of it.

Advance Praise

With some surreal characters and situations (Richard’s hens are named Lana Turner, Joan Crawford and Ava Gardner) the humor is one of the main ingredients of the novel. The weakest part in my opinion was the mystery itself. For a cozy mystery it was a bit convoluted at times and the fact that sometimes the reader is just told some crucial facts of the investigation without knowing or seeing how the characters found out about them did not help. Very minor spoilers: their very softly hinted at ‘will-they-won’t-they’ relationship is what kept me going so that I finished the book in three days, even though I was left a tiny bit disappointed with where Valérie and Richard’s dynamic seemed to be going.