Death at Chateau Bremont by M. L. Longworth

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
-PRINT: COPYRIGHT: June 28, 2011; ISBN: 9781524704292; PUBLISHER: Penguin Books; PAGES: 320; UNABRIDGED (Hardcover info from Goodreads.com)
-DIGITAL: COPYRIGHT: June 1st 2011; ISBN: 9781101548714; PUBLISHER: Penguin Books; PAGES: 320; UNABRIDGED (eBook information from Goodreads.com)
* (This version) AUDIO: COPYRIGHT: July 31st 2018; ISBN: 9781400121021; PUBLISHER: Tantor Media; DURATION: 9 hours 38 minutes; UNABRIDGED; (Audio book info from Goodreads and Amazon.com)
Feature Film or tv: Murder in Provence on BritBox (https://www.britbox.com/us/show/Murder_in_Provence_73779)

SERIES: Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery #1

MAIN CHARACTERS: (list not comprehensive)
Count Etienne de Bremont – dies from a fall out a third story window. (Was Etienne de Beaumont a model for this character?)
Isabelle de Bremont – Etienne’s wife
Antoine Verlaque – Examining magistrate (Judge)
Marine Bonnet – Law professor at the University of Aix and Etienne’s former lover
Charles and Eric Brey – brothers who request an inquest
François de Bremont – Etienne’s playboy brother
Sylvie – Marine’s friend
Bruno Paulik – Police Commissioner
Helene Paulik – Bruno’s wife, a winemaker
Jean-Claude - Caretaker
Cosette - Jean-Claud's sister

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
-SELECTED: When watching a BritBox series, “Murder in Provence” I noticed it was based on this series by M.L. Longworth, so wanted to try it, because I really enjoyed the film adaptation.
-ABOUT: It takes place in the South of France, where early on, a fellow takes a fatal fall from a third story window of his family chateau. An investigation begins with interesting investigators and lots of suspects.
-LIKED: I liked the story and characters.
-DISLIKED: Dialogue between female characters about romance seemed awkward or somehow unnatural, but it may have been the narrator. Of course, women do discuss romance. “When Harry met Sally” comes to mind as a well-done example, but this time it just didn’t work for me somehow. Too, there was a lot of yawning. I can see using that once or maybe twice, but it seemed a favorite thing to do with a character---like more people were yawning then seemed likely.
-OVERALL: The jury is still out on whether I will listen to more of these or just watch the series and consider it good.

AUTHOR:
M. L. (Mary Lou) Longworth
From Goodreads--
“M. L . Longworth has written for The Washington Post, The Times (London), The Independent, and Bon Appétit magazine. She divides her time between Aix-en-Provence, where she writes, and Paris, where she teaches writing at New York University's Paris campus.”
From Wikipedia--
“Mary Lou Longworth, known as M. L. Longworth, is a Canadian author best known for her Verlaque and Bonnet series of detective novels set in Aix-en-Provence.
In 2021, it was announced that BritBox planned to adapt Longworth’s novels into a series titled Murder In Provence.[1] The series debuted in March 2022 with co-stars Endeavour actor Roger Allam in the lead role of Antoine Verlaque, alongside Nancy Carroll (The Crown) as his romantic partner Marine Bonnet.[2]
Longworth was born in Toronto and moved to Aix in 1997. She has been influenced by Barbara Pym, and her mysteries are like "intricate puzzles". Longworth also teaches writing at NYU Paris.[3]”

NARRATOR:
Christa Lewis

From IMDB--
“Christa Lewis is known for The LXD: The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (2010), Call of Duty: Black Ops III (2015) and The LXD: The Uprising Begins (2010).”

From ChristaLewis.com--
“When I began narrating audiobooks in 2012, I had no idea what lay ahead. I left behind a full-time job as TV news reader in Berlin, Germany and plunged headlong into the ferocious yet whimsical wilds that is the Los Angeles voice over scene...
300 audiobooks later, I still feel like a beginner every single day at the start of her next big adventure ...”
“After a 4-year actor training at BU, School for the Arts, I was hired as a news & features reader for international TV news broadcaster DW-TV in Berlin, Germany.
Since then, I've voiced installations at MoMA in NYC and been installed in The Garden - the only permanent exhibit at the J. Paul Getty Museum in LA, worked on numerous TV and cinema release animated films and cartoons, narrated museum guides, children's apps, documentaries and commercials.
I've even blown out my voice in video games - most notably in Call of Duty: Black Ops3, as Sophia the lovelorn and snippy German AI ;-)
I speak accent-free German fluently and am comfortable working in an array of accents and dialects.
Along the way there have been 8 Earphones awards for narration and an Earphone for directing, a SOVAS Voice Arts Award, a Sultry Listener’s Award, a Listeners Choice Award and 2 Audie nominations.
My narrations have reached the Audible bestseller list in Mystery/Thriller, SciFi/Fantasy, Young Adult and Literary Fiction.
With 300 audiobooks narrated, my clients are Audible Studios, Blackstone Audio, Brilliance Audio, Christian Audio, Dreamscape Media, Gildan Media, Hachette Book Group, Harper Audio, HighBridge Company, Macmillan Audio, Recorded Books, Simon & Schuster and Tantor Media as well as boutique audiobook publishers & independent authors.
From the work that I have been privileged to do, my biggest takeaway is - it's always about the story.”

*Well, she does have a lovely voice. The two main character’s voices are good, and some of the others as well, but there were a couple of the male characters where the voices seemed exaggerated and difficult to listen to. And I sort of felt like the English with a French accent was not as lovely a sound as I’d thought, if this was authentic. I almost wished it was just in English without the accent. Thinking, 'since at one point in the book, it's mentioned that Verlaque says something in English (suggesting that everything else he said in French), that if they were all actually speaking French--not English with a French accent, why bother with a French accent?

LOCATION(S)
Saint-Antonin, France; Aix-en-Provence or simply Aix (medieval Occitan: Aics), is a city and commune in southern France, about 30 km (20 mi) north of Marseille; French Riviera

TIME(S)
1990’s?

GENRE
Romance; Mystery; Fiction; Mystery Thriller; Cozy Mystery

SUBJECTS:
France; Crime; Murder; Romance

DEDICATION:
“For Mum and Reini”

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From “Chapter One”
“Chapter One
"Verlaque stood in front of the caretaker's house. It was a medieval cottage; its thick walls made of a golden, rough-hewed stone that glowed in the late afternoon light. The windows were small, to keep out the summer heat, and their wooden shutters were painted a faded gray-blue. Behine Verlaque loomed the mountain. He remembered what Paul Cezanne had said of the montagn Saint Victoire-that he could move his easel half a meter and see a totally different mountain. Verlaque tried it now, shifting his heavy body slightly to the right. It worked. The spiky top of one of the mountain's many limestone knobs--it's south flank resembled a dinosaur's back--came into view. A shadow suddenly floated across the peak, and its color changed from dusty rose to gray.
He turned back around and looked at the chateau, not really a chateau but a bastide--a country home built by Aix-en-Provence's wealthy seventeenth-century citizens, who every July would leave their downtown mansions and make their way, servants in tow, to the cooler countryside. It was cold up here--although less than ten kilometers from Aix, Saint-Antonin was five hundred meters above sea level--and Verlaque realized that he had left his jacket in the car."

RATING:.
3.5

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
8-24-2023 to 8-30-2023 ( )

the characters were developed , the plot was fine, there were cigars and cuisine. I may try another, but think it was just not my cup of tea, no disparagement of the author ( )

2.5 stars

Overall I liked this book. I felt the storyline was strong and the writing style flowed really well.
However there were a few things I didn't like and found them distracting. First was the misspellings and/or typos. Probably just over a handful but still annoying.
There are parts where Marine's memories of the brothers is muffled. I understand what the author is trying to do here but I don't feel that this pulled off very successfully.
Lastly, there is a conversation between the two main characters that keeps getting postponed and never gets finished. Maybe this storyline is meant to continue into follow up books but this felt a bit unfinished.
Neither of these were main components to the book so someone else could probably read this and not even notice them. Based on just the writing style and plot this would likely be a 3.5 to 4 star for me but unfortunately it didn't work for me. ( )

I love this series. I looked up Aix en Provence on the internet. Sadly I will probably never see it, but I get a clear picture of the town and the atmosphere from Longworth's books. ( )

Antoine Verlaque, a head district judge from the Palais de Justice and favorite colleague Bruno Paulik are investigating the death of Count Étienne de Bremont on the grounds of the bastide (manor house) that has been in the family for generations. The count is best known for his work at the film production company, Souleiado Films in Marseille. The count’s body is discovered by caretaker Jean-Claude Auvieux and he is the only one living on site in a small cottage. As circumstances related to the death are suspicious, Charles and Eric Bley, first cousins of the deceased have requested an inquest.

Verlaque loves his food, wine, and cigars with specific preferences for each. At times he seems more interested in them than the investigation or perhaps it should simply be said that he intersperses pursuit of them seamlessly into his daily life during an open investigation. Verlaque’s former girlfriend Marine Bonnet is a law professor at Aix’s university and is first invited to the bastide as a childhood friend of Count Bremont. Verlaque’s personality adds different sparks to his interactions with Marine and the undercurrent reveals more of their past relationship simultaneously guiding their investigative actions.

As another of Verlaque’s preferences is "to interview people where they lived, so they’d be more comfortable, but also so he could see their surroundings" the travel between the countryside and cities eases the addition of twists and red herrings simultaneously adding varied cultural activities and interesting atmosphere in the setting changes.

It was easy to accept Marine’s participation in the investigation in Book 1. The copyright page indicates "a Verlaque and Bonnet mystery" as the subtitle. This sparks my curiosity to continue reading the series to learn if Marine’s assistance was merely for the opening of the series or if she will continue to become part of future investigations at Velaque’s invitation. ( )