DEATH AND FROMAGE

Darkly comic doings in rustic France.

Proving that Paris doesn’t have a monopoly on great French cuisine, tiny Saint-Sauver in the Loire Valley boasts not one but two Michelin-starred chefs. Guy Garçon is the future, explains food critic Auguste Tatillon. Tonight, however, belongs to three-starred Sébastien Grosmallard, owner of Les Gens Qui Mangent, who’s celebrating his return to his hometown by hosting a tasting menu soirée. Although Tatillon believes Grosmallard’s day has passed, patrons look forward eagerly to his signature dessert, parfait de fromage de chèvre de Grosmallard. But when the dish arrives, disaster! Grosmallard’s son, Antonin, has made the fabled confection with vegan goat cheese! Grosmallard is livid, Tatillon pans the event, and the next day cheesemaker Fabrice Ménard is found dead is his own fermentation tank. Normally, Richard Ainsworth would simply shake his head and sigh at the passions these events ignite among his French neighbors. Richard, who owns a bed and breakfast, is known in Saint-Sauver for his quiet demeanor, his love of American cinema, and his passing resemblance to Downton Abbey’s Lord Grantham. Egged on by his adventurous dinner partner, lovely Valérie d’Orçay, he decides that there’s something suspicious about Ménard’s death and agrees to help her investigate. Before their inquiry is complete, he’ll be joined by his estranged wife, his daughter, her husband, three laying hens, the chief of police (who’s Valérie’s ex-husband), the Liebowitz brothers (three Jewish movers from New Jersey), and Passepartout, Valérie’s omnipresent chihuahua. More corpses turn up en route to a labyrinthine solution, but Richard’s diffidence in the face of Valérie’s kineticism is the force that powers this madcap farce.

A movie-buff hero replays the Marx Brothers.