Book Review : Mayhem in Saint-Malo

This is 4.5 / 5 for me. It could have gone either way.

I really like the main character Mary Lester, a French police lieutenant, who is sent from Quimper to St Malo to investigate the death of a fit, middle-aged woman who is found in the sea. Her death was initially thought to be a heart attack, but her husband, an important local man, knows the right people to have a second opinion. Mary Lester asks who else has disappeared in St Malo in the last year and investigates three other missing person cases.

Mary is a character who doesn’t like her overbearing boss in St Malo and knees a colleague in the groin after he disrespects her. She also slaps him in the face hard enough to give him a black eye.

I like the book because the story is always moving along and there’s no time for introspection or for Mary to contemplate her existence over a period of ten pages or so.

The St Malo tourist board must also be pleased with the book as at times it reads like a travelogue and made me want to visit the place.