cover image Mr. Donaghue Investigates

Mr. Donaghue Investigates

Anna Shone. St. Martin's Press, $21.95 (253pp) ISBN 978-0-312-13127-2

What do you get when you throw an American movie mogul, his pop-star wife, an Olympic judo champ, a bunch of nuns and an idiosyncratic PI named Ulysses Finnegan Donaghue into a restored 12th-century monastery in Provence? In this case: the colorful cast of this lively debut, set during a spiritual retreat at a monastery restored by the mogul, Thelonius Kapp, and his young wife, the singer Salome. The patrons' needs are tended to by a cadre of nuns who have taken vows of silence. Tranquillity, however, is shattered when Kapp collapses in agony in the chapel. Salome's young beautician is the next to die, and, after a beautiful novice is crushed beneath an ancient wine press, Donaghue joins with a local chief inspector to solve what might be murder, a double suicide or a conspiracy. An intriguing series of interviews sets off a provocative (and sometimes confusing) avalanche of information. Shone's manipulations are sometimes obtrusive, and much of the dialogue is cumbersome, but there's an undeniably charming tone to it all, and the intuitive, Shakespeare-spouting Donaghue is a kick. (July)