American expat Tabitha Knight has found a new life in postwar Paris, along with a delightful friend in aspiring chef Julia Child. Yet there are perils in peacetime too, as a killer infiltrates one of the city’s most famous fashion houses.

If there’s one art the French have mastered as well as fine cuisine, it’s haute couture. Tabitha and Julia are already accustomed to sampling the delights of the former. Now fashion is returning to the forefront in Paris, as the somber hues of wartime are replaced by vibrant colors and ultra-feminine silhouettes, influenced by Christian Dior’s “New Look.”

Tabitha and Julia join a friend for a private showing at an exclusive fashion atelier, Maison Lannet. The event goes well, but when Tabitha returns later that evening to search for a lost glove, she finds the lights still on—and the couturier dead, strangled by a length of lace. The shop manager suspects that a jealous rival—perhaps Dior himself—committed the crime. Tabitha dismisses that idea, but when another body is found, it’s apparent that someone is targeting employees of Maison Lannet.

Meanwhile, Tabitha’s Grand-père and Oncle Rafe are in the midst of their own design-related fracas, as they squabble over how to decorate their new restaurant. And there are strange break-ins at a nearby shoe store—but are the crimes related? It’s up to Tabitha to don her investigative hat and find answers before someone commits another fatal fashion faux pas.

My Review:

As Julia Child once said, “Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.” Her best (fictional) friend, Tabitha Knight, seems to have followed Child’s advice. Unfortunately for the denizens of post-World War II Paris – but fortunate for the reader – she’s discovered that she’s passionate about investigating murders – and the city seems to be encouraging her in that passion by dropping corpses at her feet.

The story begins when Julia and Tabitha, attend a private showing at an up-and-coming new haute couture fashion house. The luxury of Maison Lannet’s location and creations are a complete antithesis to the austerity and rationing of the late war, and Tabitha is a bit entranced by it all – as is the client who brought her to the atelier to serve as translator for all the meticulous and precise terminology of the highly regulated business of providing ultra-exclusive fashion to the fashionably wealthy.

It’s only after the showing that Tabitha does what she seems to do – well, not so much best as often. She finds a dead body. She returns to the atelier after the show to find her missing glove – it’s a miserable winter – and finds the corpse of Maison Lannet’s premiere designer instead. And gets shoved into the side of a desk as the murderer makes his escape.

And that’s only the FIRST body that Tabitha literally trips over, much to the consternation of police Inspecteur Étienne Merveille. He’s dealt with Tab’s penchant for getting involved in murder investigations twice already (Mastering the Art of French Murder and A Murder Most French), and would really rather not deal with her blend of exasperating but effective nosiness ever again.

Or at least that’s what his generally impassive expression has led Tabitha to believe. Even though she’d rather not. Believe she’s not helpful and that he’s not interested in her help, that is. After all, he’s engaged.

But the case won’t leave her alone – and neither will her budding reputation as someone who is more reliable and less corrupt than ‘les flics’ – the police – are reputed. Most of officialdom is still tarred with the brush of collaboration with the hated Nazi occupation even six years after liberation – especially the police. The abuses were legion, the Parisian memory is long, and the past isn’t nearly far enough passed for those who suffered under it to have gotten over it.

Tabitha’s every turn seems to wind this case tighter around her, as it leads from the fashionable ateliers of the post-war fashion industry into the lingering darkness of that past and the still open questions around collaboration versus survival that simmer behind every door – including the door of the maison where Tabitha lives with her elderly ‘messieurs’ – her grand-père and her Oncle Rafe, whose wartime activities and life-long relationship uneasily straddle that very same strand of barbed wire.

As, seemingly, frighteningly and sometimes desperately, does the whole of the City of Light that she has come to love.

Escape Rating A-: This third entry in the series isn’t as light and frothy as the first – and it’s all the more compelling for it. Part of that lesser application of froth is that Julia Child’s presence is reduced in this one – not in the negative sense, but very much and appropriately in the cooking sense, where the flavor of her presence is more intense and concentrated but in fewer scenes. She simmers a lot in this one, but doesn’t bubble over quite as much or as often as she has in the previous books.

Which is totally appropriate, because just as Tabitha’s cooking skills – originally quite execrable – have improved under Julia’s tutelage, her investigative skills have come along nicely as well, and we’ve gotten to know her and her ‘messieurs’ better. She’s grown as a character, and is now more than capable of carrying the story even if her messieurs are still more than willing to enjoy Julia’s cooking whenever it’s on offer. And who can blame them?

While Tabitha’s investigations still rely on her literally tripping over corpses, it’s a pleasant change from some other amateur detective series that she is not intimately involved with any of the victims or those in their immediate circles before they drop. Also, Paris has a big enough population that it’s not quite so outre that there are as many murder victims as Tabs seems to find. (In other words, this is not Cabot Cove or Midsomer County – and it’s quite possible to believe that people will ALWAYS come to Paris in spite of the murder rate!)

As much as I enjoy this series, this entry is considerably darker than the first two – and not precisely as a result of Tabitha’s predilection for tripping over corpses. Not that that helps. But in this case it’s all about motivation for the murders rather than the actual gore.

While the setting for this entry in the series is draped in the lush fabrics and ultra-feminine silhouettes of Christian Dior’s signature ‘New Look’ for the post war era, the elitist, snobby, wasteful underpinnings of haute couture make a stark contrast to the austerity of the occupation – as Dior intended – and to the still roiling grief that embraces the city even in recovery. It’s not exactly the sense of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, but more that Nero is fiddling while the ashes still smolder. Or something like that. It feels really wrong even though it’s also really true.

But the darkness at the heart of this story is tied up and chained by the lingering pain of the occupation, caught up in the hard questions about who merely paid as much lip service and even actual service to the Nazis and their puppet French government as they had to in order to survive – versus who was a true collaborateur who willingly climbed into bed with the Nazis, literally or figuratively – for profit or power or both.

That her beloved grand-père was one who cooperated enough to stay alive AND to earn money to funnel to the Resistance, while Oncle Rafe was an active member of that Resistance, brings the tension uncomfortably close to home.

It’s not a question about whether the right people were punished, because it’s clear that that wasn’t always the case. But rather, that there is still a taste for more punishment because it is certain that there are plenty of people who have so far managed to avoid reaping what they gleefully sowed.

Which leads back to what made this story darker than the previous books in the series, because the occupation was dark. That darkness still lingers, there are still rats hiding in it and in this entry in the series it turns out to be Tabitha Knight’s calling to pin at least one of those rats in the light.

The story does end on an upbeat note. Good does triumph in this case, evil does get its just desserts, and it looks like Tabitha’s messieurs are well on the way to re-opening their restaurant so that they no longer have to rely on Tabitha’s still somewhat questionable cooking or Julia Child’s expansive culinary charity. Tabitha’s love life seems to be on the uptick as well – much to the delight of her friends and family so they have something to gossip about.

How much those developments will be part of future books in the series, I can’t wait to find out!