At the Villa Rose

Enjoyable old-fashioned mystery, set in a French town near the Swiss border, is well-written and engaging, though overlong. First we see the crime through the eyes of a character who thinks he knows more than he does as he observes a famous French detective investigate a murder. Things are looking very bad for the girlfriend of a rich inventor. When this thread finishes, about three-quarters of the way through the book, we get to see the story from a whole different perspective that explains much of what was confusing the first time around. And the detective does some explaining as well. This is the first in the series, and I would definitely read more to see if they all use the same formula. The setting is very well done and there are show more some good scenes. show less

At the Villa Rose is a mildly entertaining mystery that predates the Golden Age of detective fiction. It shows. The detective, Inspector Hanaud of the Paris Sûreté, solves the case just over halfway through the book. The last half of the book is an explanation of the crime. The mystery peaked too early and the explanation went on too long. While the mystery suffers in comparison with those of the next generation of detective novels, I still found its setting in Aix-les-Bains intriguing and its characters interesting. I'll read more in this series since I'm interested in the development of the genre, but it probably won't suit readers with a more contemporary taste.

After a rambling first chapter, I went on to really enjoy this novel, which proved engaging from Chapter 2 onwards. The plot is expertly devised and the characters all believable.

The only bad thing is the author's overuse of "then" - arguably the laziest word in any writer's vocabulary - but the story itself makes up for this poor element of style.

A book I would read again,this one.

An old novel that hasn't aged particularly well. Rather a simplistic murder story sustained principally by the patina of glamour imparted by its venue (the casino and hotel of Aix les baines. Still, I certainly enjoyed revisiting this novel which I had frst read about 35 years ago.