“You don’t believe Madame Tablier is guilty then, do you?” She was trying to get him to open up a bit, aware that he rarely made his true feelings known. He wasn’t exactly the silent type but he was English after all. In her experience, he wasn’t keen on silence, awkward or otherwise, and tried to fill it whenever possible. But his mind was elsewhere after Madame Tablier’s arrest; she hadn’t seen him like this since the mafia had assassinated his favourite hen. He was taking the arrest personally.
I’m delighted to join the Blog Tour of “Death in le Jardin” by Ian Moore. Many thanks to Insta Book Tours, the publishers Farrago Books, and of course the author for organising the tour and gifting me a copy of the book.
The story:
In the Follet Valley, everything appears calm and peaceful. But at La Chapelle-sur-Follet, a Jardin Remarquable not far from Richard Ainsworth’s chambre d’hôte (or posh B&B, as he refers to it), murder lurks beneath the beautiful floral exterior. Madame Tablier, Richard’s faithful (if a bit surly) femme de ménage, has been arrested for the murder of her brother-in-law (who, much to Richard’s surprise, was also her former fiancé).
Refusing to accept her guilt, Richard, along with business partner and probable part-time assassin Valérie d’Orçay, head to La Chapelle to investigate. There they find no shortage of unpleasant characters — but will they be able to uncover the truth and clear Madame Tablier’s name?
My thoughts:
“Death in le Jardin”, by Ian Moore is the fourth book in the Follet Valley Mystery series (following “Death and Croissants“, “Death and Fromage” and “Death at the Chateau“), and it feels very comforting to be back in the company of B&B owner/reluctant investigator Richard Ainsworth!
In this story we once again join Richard and Valérie on the hunt of a murderer, but the case is even closer to home than usual, with Richard’s housekeeper under suspicion. Richard clearly feels the responsibility of this strongly, and is determined to uncover the truth. This leads the mismatched, but surprisingly effective, duo to the beautiful garden town of La Chapelle, where an unpleasant committee seems to wield a disproportionate amount of power…
“It occurred to him that as usual he was losing concentration and the reputation of himself, and perhaps even the country of his birth, depended on this.”
“Death in le Jardin”, by Ian Moore
As always, I very much enjoyed the author’s writing, which is both laugh-out-loud funny and an intriguing puzzle. I also love the film reference scattered throughout the book (although I will admit to looking some of them up on Richard’s hated IMDb!).
As the author says in his dedication at the start of the book, it is for “all those who need a smile”, and that’s exactly what it does, with a cast of wonderful characters, gentle humour and a very good mystery to boot!
Pages: 304
Published: 6th June 2024
Rating: 🐈🐈🐈🐈/5
Books, Cats, Etc. 
Oh I hate the title for this.. the premise sounds good- it’s just, it doesn’t follow the franglais rules in my head 😅 it sounds do wrong ahah
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