Monsieur Pamplemousse

M. Pamplemousse, former Agent of the Surete and current restaurant critic, visits the hotel of an up-and-coming chef expecting fine food and rest, but when he is served up the head (which, fortunately is plastic) of a fellow guest, he realizes that something is amiss. As the plot unravels (and features, in some order, a libidinous hotel concierge, a dim-witted local policeman, a strange gag about wooden legs and an inflatable sex dummy) I really lost track of what was going on, but it doesn't matter. The characters are fun and some of the action is hilarious.

Monsieur Pamplemousse is an ex-police officer who has found a new career as a restaurant reviewer. While on an annual holiday to the Hotel La Langoustine, he is also combining business by deciding whether they deserve the coveted third Stock Pot. While there, he sees an unusual couple, a striking blonde with a young man with claws for hands, and they aren't very nice to each other.

The woman is extremely upset that Pamplemousse won't give up his usual table to her, but he stands firm. When he is served the chef's special dish, he doesn't expect that a man's head will be inside - not a real head, it is discovered, but a very good facsimile. Now he wonders if someone is sending him a message, and why.

But to make things worse, the co-owner show more of the hotel, Madame Sophie, has set her sights on Pamplemousse as a sexual conquest. Not wanting to receive her advances, he must find a way to put her off without offending her. But there are also the series of small accidents - starting with someone who has cut through his balcony railing which could have killed him under the right circumstances. So if he doesn't discover what's going on and soon, he may have to put an end to a delightfully delicious career...

Well, I really wanted to like this book. I love mysteries, and while I've never read anything by this author before, I did have hopes. But then again, one does usually think that when a book is labeled a mystery, there will be a dead body or two somewhere along the line. In this instance, I was disappointed. There is none. There is not only no dead body, there is not much a mystery, either.

This book, it appears to me, was written to be some sort of farce of something - I haven't quite decided which - either of the mystery genre or something sexual. For one thing, I don't understand why Madame Sophie can't tell the difference between a candlestick, plastic and a real person. Methinks she needs to see a physician along the line...

Anyway...what was supposed to be humorous along the lines of keeping her happy and keeping Pamplemousse faithful to his wife, there was an awful lot of pages devoted to this, and none of which I found remotely interesting. It would have been better if he had just explained to her that while he found her attractive, he would remain true to his Doucette. But no...

Then, I never really understood why he was the target of someone wanting him out of the way. He never asked questions; he never tried to find out who sent him the head. So why was someone trying to 'send him a message' or kill him? It didn't make any sense. The climactic scene regarding this, late in the book in a hospice, was completely off the wall. Perhaps if we were given to understand that he was interested in more than his palate or his dog, but we were not.

In the end, when everything is explained, it is neither remotely interesting nor worthy of being called a mystery. In fact, the only mystery I discovered was the fact that there are several more of these in the series, all of which I will happily skip - you should, too. show less