Murder in the Rue Dumas: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery

Longworth’s entertaining second mystery set in Aix-en-Provence (after 2011’s Death at the Château Bremont) plunges magistrate Antoine Verlaque and his law professor girlfriend, Marine Bonnet, into the world of academe following a murder. Someone has battered in the head of Dr. Georges Moutte, the chair of the theology department at the University d’Aix, who was about to retire. The body was found by two students who broke into Moutte’s office to learn if either of them had won a prestigious fellowship, but who left the scene without reporting the murder in order to conceal their own breaking and entering. Apart from probing the rivalries among the university’s faculty, Verlaque also looks into the possibility that the killer was an art thief. Fans of European sleuths with a taste for good food such as Martin Walker’s Bruno (Bruno, Chief of Police) will have fun. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown. (Oct.)