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

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Richard remains a dazed passenger in the case until things become really serious and someone murders Ava Gardner, one of his beloved hens... and you don't mess with a fellow's hens! The characters and setup are rather fun, except for the creepy older middle-aged couple, who are way overdone. The book is from Robert’s point of view, but the author makes one jarring exception to switch to Valerie, just to get a very offputting scene in with the naked Thompsons, which should have been left out for many reasons. There is humour to be had, with events putting me in mind at times of an Ealing comedy caper with an added je ne sais quoi. It all seems improbable but that is part of its charm - a slice of escapism, shot through with the stoical Englishness of film-lover Richard who blunders into the right answers without even realising, and the indomitable Valérie with her dog Passepartout. What do you read when you have read all of the books in the Thursday Murder Club series but you are still craving something with humor, European flair, and, yes, murder? One day, an elderly gentleman guest goes missing, leaving behind a bloodied handprint on the wallpaper, ‘ that’ll never come out!’, but it later disappeared.! Into this puzzle comes Valerie, a femme fatales, who rips Richard out of his comfort zone as they zip a round the countryside meeting many stereotypical characters.

Richard Ainsworth runs a B&B (or chambre d'hote) in the Loire Valley. One morning, a bloodied handprint is found on the wall of a bedroom and its owner disappeared. Another guest, Valérie d'Orçay, a formidable Frenchwoman, decides to investigate and Richard finds himself tagging along, not entirely by choice. All manner of farcical goings-on ensue. The mystery of what exactly happened to the elderly gentleman, of who the beautiful and mysterious Valérie is and who is targeting Richard’s hens (all named after famous Golden Age actresses) is cute and entertaining in a low-key kind of way. Halfway through, however, I found myself sort of stopping to care ‘whodunnit’ and realised I was mainly continuing to read because of Richard and Valérie’s dynamic. The missing guest, Monsieur Grandchamps, has a twin brother who appears to be his nemesis. On interviewing him, Richard and Valerie, along with the local policeman Bonneval, they find Monsieur Victor Grandchamps to have very little love for his missing brother. He is very dramatic and tells them why he hates his brother in a very supervillain-esque speech that made me laugh. The fact that he is actually just a very ordinary, dissatisfied and petty old man seems to be completely irrelevant to his deluded mind. The humour comes from the fact that people like this really do exist and their many foibles are a constant source of amusement to the rest of us.I thoroughly enjoyed Death and Croissants, which is a fun, lighthearted read with a genuine mystery at it’s heart. It is told entirely from Richard’s point of view and that’s the source of much of the humour as Richard is a put upon 53 year old Englishman with a rather naive world view. I don’t know anything about the middle class South of England mindset, so I assume that what I took to be a rather cruel portrayal of an unassuming man will resonate with readers who understand it. Along with Richard, I’m thinking what fresh hell is this, and have a lingering suspicion I’ve wandered into Fawlty Tower’s sister establishment. Death and Croissants is the first in a new series of Follet Valley mysteries written by the comedian @monsieurlemoore. Whilst cosy murder mystery is not a genre I read very often, like many people I read and enjoyed The Thursday Murder Club so this seemed like the perfect book when I was looking for a fun, light read - and it proved to be exactly that.

I truly liked this book and would recommend it to anyone who loved the Thursday Murder club by Richard Osman. In fact Valérie reminds me of Elizabeth. They have the same personality. 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. Richard is a middle-aged Englishman who runs a B&B in the fictional Val de Follet in the Loire Valley. Nothing ever happens to Richard, and really that’s the way he likes it. One day, however, one of his older guests disappears, leaving behind a bloody handprint on the wallpaper. Another guest, the enigmatic Valerie, persuades a reluctant Richard to join her in investigating the disappearance. Richard remains a dazed passenger in the case until things become really serious and someone murders Ava Gardner, one of his beloved hens … and you don’t mess with a fellow’s hens! I love main character Richard's vulnerability, it lent his character a depth and completeness that really resonated. Richard's feeling unseen and under-appreciated and having opted for so long to do things he must do rather than what he wanted to, made me appreciate author Ian Moore attributing all that to a male character. Much of the humor here stems from cultural stereotypes, British, French and Italian; done artfully, without offense or exploitation, as perhaps only a professional comedian can pull off best.Valérie is glamourous, confident and potentially deadly. She is never knowingly underdressed, has hidden “skills” and has the makings of camouflage in her bag, so what if it’s actually a very expensive face mask. She also happens to have a dog more often than not in the bag too. She doesn’t ask Richard to get involved, she more or less tells him and he just goes along with it. I ran across this on Audible as one they recommended for fans of The Thursday Murder club. It did not have that subtitle - only Goodreads has it and it is ridiculous, I would have skipped it if I have seen it. I rather liked Richard’s attempts at stoicism, with his overblown yet understated (can you do both?) approach to all things.