The Vanishing Museum on the Rue Mistral

January 4, 2021
Longworth’s entertaining ninth Provençal mystery (after 2019’s A Noël Killing) takes Judge Antoine Verlaque, the examining magistrate of Aix-en-Provence, and his wife, Marine Bonnet, along with his team of policemen, to the Musée Quentin-Savary, a drab, rarely visited museum, which has been thoroughly robbed—little remains apart from a bench and a potted fern. Verlaque must discover who emptied the museum and why. As he examines a slew of possible motives, a violent death deepens the mystery. In Verlaque and Bonnet’s quest for answers, which involves walking the streets of Aix and driving along the scenic coastal road to Marseille, they enjoy fine dining in small, atmospheric restaurants at every opportunity. Meanwhile, the 45-year-old Verlaque is preparing himself for fatherhood, and tender scenes with his wife give a pleasing balance to the narrative. Charming characters complement the tidy mystery plot. This is just the ticket for those seeking a much-needed vicarious vacation. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown.

April 1, 2021

Mus�e Quentin-Savary is a small museum in Aix-en-Provence. There's a collection of porcelain and a newly acquired Felix Ziem work, but nothing to attract the attention of thieves. When museum director Achille Formentin arrives on Tuesday after the Easter weekend, he's stunned to find all the contents of the museum are gone. It's a challenging case for Antoine Verlaque, chief magistrate for the region. He welcomes the distraction from his worries about his wife's pregnancy and where to send his child to school. He and commissioner Bruno Paulik are unhappy when they discover that a dozen people have keys to the museum. Their case becomes more serious when two men are attacked in the museum, one left for dead. Despite the careful police investigation, Verlaque and Paulik always have time for a gourmet meal and an excellent bottle of wine. VERDICT The ninth in the series (after A No�l Killing) continues the author's focus on ambiance and the good life in Provence: the food, the wine, the art. Foodies who enjoy mysteries like David P. Wagner's Italy-set "Rick Montoya" titles will appreciate the emphasis on gourmet meals in this police procedural.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

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March 15, 2021
The theft of an immense collection of porcelain provokes utter bafflement among the Aixois police. The Mus�e Quentin-Savary in Aix is in some ways emblematic of the laid-back ways of Provence. Unlike the mammoth Mus�e D'Orsay in Paris, which occupies an entire decommissioned train station, Quentin-Savary, tucked into the block-long Rue Mistral, shares its compact three-story building with two apartments. The top floor is occupied by Gilbert Quentin-Savary, great-great-great grandson of the museum's original patron. The middle floor is tenanted by a chocolate salesman. The ground floor is the museum itself, which offers half a dozen rooms of porcelain vases, figurines, and dinnerware. Most of the visitors to the collection are either scholars of the ceramic arts or schoolchildren like L�a Paulik, who visits with her middle school class. Museum director Achille Formentin has so few opportunities to show off the collection that rival curator Aur�lien Lopez has the nerve to suggest merging the Quentin-Savary with his own Mus�e Cavasino. But Formentin will hear of no such thing, at least not until he discovers his entire collection gone, vanished, stolen. L�a's father, police commissioner Bruno Paulik, is stunned by the news. He and examining magistrate Antoine Verlaque share dozens of questions. Who would steal not just a single prized item, but the museum's entire contents? Did the thief covet a single bauble and make off with the rest as a smoke screen? Is the collection more valuable en masse? Is the theft a ploy by Lopez to discredit Formentin? And how on earth could anyone steal an entire museum's worth of fragile porcelain from a residential neighborhood without making a sound? Extreme puzzlement in a lush French setting.

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March 31, 2021
Sometime over the Easter weekend, a little-known, seldom-visited museum in Aix-en-Provence is emptied of all but a chair, a bench, and a fern--the mystery is what motivated the thieves to clear out the museum, the only known valuable contents of which were a recently donated nineteenth-century painting and some Sevres porceline. Aix magistrate Antoine Verlaque, making his ninth appearance as the chief investigator in this series, which is set in Aix and the surrounding countryside, takes on the case. Judge Verlaque is a gourmand to the teeth; investigating interrupts meals and thoughts about meals. Foodie readers will be rewarded by sumptuous descriptions of Verlaque's restaurant feasts, and armchair travelers will love Longworth's detailed descriptions of Aix and Provence itself. The plot is a side dish; when two people, one dead, are discovered face down on the museum floor late in the narrative, it seems more an afterthought than essential to the story. Light on plot and characterization, but well worth it for atmosphere.

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