A Murder Most French is a delicious addition to the Tabitha Knight/Julia Child imaginative murder mystery series. The second to be exact, and hopefully not the last. The series revolves around a young American chef in training who becomes friends with the not yet too famous Julia Child, and they find themselves in extraordinary dangerous predicaments which they along with an eclectic funny cast try to assist the police in solving. All the while, Tabitha’s mentor, Julia, helps to teach her student how to cook mouthwatering dishes which the reader is fortunate enough to glimpse.
As the story opens, we find Tabitha and Julia at the French outdoor market buying ingredients for Tabitha’s dinner which she will prepare (hopefully correctly) for her Oncle Rafe and Grand-Pere whom she lives with while living in France.
When Julia invites Tabitha to the Cordon Bleu Cooking School where Julia is studying to watch a presentation on wine, never in either of their wildest dreams did they imagine they would witness a premiere chef open a very old, expensive bottle of wine, take a sip and drop dead!
Unfortunately, the bottle had been given to Tabitha to give to the chef by a young street boy. It was sealed and had a tag on it. But when the police arrive and confiscate the bottle, Tabitha realizes the label is missing. Why?
Of course, Tabitha becomes a suspect along with everyone else in the room and decides she must poke around to see how this could have happened. And of course, her detective frenemy tells her to stay out of it! And then a second chef is killed in the exact same way only this time the tag is still on the bottle. Finally, a clue! But what does it mean?
As Tabitha and Julia go down Alice’s rabbit hole of trying to figure out just what is happening, they soon learn of tunnels under the restaurants which store vintage and expensive wines brought over by the German during the war. Could this be a clue?
As Tabitha takes the reigns and Julia cooks the meals, Tabitha, against the advice of the lead detective with whom she has a love-hate-love relationship with finds herself in a dangerous situation as she discovers the killer is on to her.
A Murder Most French is a wonderfully humorous story with a delightful plot, scrumptious recipes (which are from Julia Child) and of course, a surprise ending. As I wrote when I reviewed the first book in the series, Mastering the Art of French Murder, as you read, please hear Julia’s words as you know she would say them. It makes the story even better!
Thank you #NetGalley #Kensington #ColleenCambridge #AMurderMost French for the advanced copy.