The Diamond Caper

Peter Mayle's Caper novels are technically mysteries, I guess.  There's a crime, a detective, usually a chase or some sort of counter-scam, and the bad guys get caught.  I don't think of them as mysteries, though.  I solve them much too easily, and think of them mainly as a framework for a series of fantastic meals and postcards from the south of France.

The Diamond Caper adds a slight twist to Mayle's usual blueprint.  This time the crime, diamonds stolen from a well-hidden personal safe, were insured by Knox Insurance.  That's Elena Morales's employer and the crime occurred just as she and Sam Levitt bought their house in Provence.  Between the lure of long lunches and the company's setback, she's decided it's time to become a lady of leisure - after she and Sam solve the burglary.  With the help of their friend, the slightly disreputable mogul Francis Reboul and a detour through several stately homes, they discover the subtle clue to the obvious (to me, anyway) culprit.  Like most of Mayle's books, it's quick. light, and enjoyable, best read either on a beach or in the depths of winter when you wish you were somewhere warmer and less depressing.

Acquired Tastes

The next installment in my Peter Malye casual re-read, Acquired Tastes is a collection of essays Mayle wrote in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  He covers, well, acquired tastes - expensive yet visible items most of us would partake of if only we could afford it (or have an expense account allowing us to explore them).  Truffles, custom-fit clothing, cashmere, champagne, and limousines get their day along with the less pleasant expenses of house guests, lawyers, and tipping.   It's a bit more "guy" oriented than I remember it (I can assure you that I covet cashmere sweaters as much as any man - or more so, since I don't have a shirt coming between the exquisite softness and my arms and torso), and the numbers are a bit off thanks to the inflation of twenty-five years.  Like most of Mayle's work, it's aspirational, leaving the reader wanting a custom-made suit, hand-made shoes, and a five-star dinner date as an excuse to wear them.

Encore Provence

Peter Mayle returned to Provence in the late 1990s after a few years in New York.  He simultaneously returned to writing about Provence after a handful of novels (starting with the delightful Hotel Pastis).  The result was Encore Provence, fourteen essays on village life, olive oil, wine, lavender, and how to enjoy your time in rural Provence.  They're the literary equivalent of a bar with unusual appetizers and good wine - enjoyable (particularly in good company) and worth revisiting on a regular basis.

Toujours Provence

I remember the first time I read Toujours Provence, my introduction to Peter Mayle.  It was the summer after I'd graduated from college and was slowly emptying my apartment in Pittsburgh.  I spent a lot of time packing boxes and driving across the state, and even more looking for a job.  That still left a lot of time to spend time with my college friends, and to read.  Nearly 25 years later, Toujours Provence is as enjoyable as I remember it.  While Mayle felt the need to create a loose narrative framework for A Year in Provence, here he provides literary postcards of his life on the edge of the Luberon.  Singing toads, a truffle hunter training a pot-bellied pig, buried treasure, Mayle's then new-found fame - they're all fettered in their own essays, along with a dozen other topics.  And food.  Everything comes back to consumables, whether it's a birthday picnic, two lunches with the local gourmand, or a visit to the local wholesale market.  Sunny and breezily told (I assume like a spring day in Provence), Mayle's second travel collection surpass his first, in part because there's no thread to tie the essays together.   

A Year in Provence

Maybe I'm a little more cynical than when I was in my early 20s.  I'm not sure I still believe that A Year in Provence is an accurate portrayal of Peter Mayle's first year in France.  It's too neat, with contractors showing up at the most entertaining times and uninvited guests always showing up at the least appropriate time.  Now I suspect that most of this happened, but Mayle's literary skills embellished and rearranged the actual events.

I don't care.  A Year in Provence is as enjoyable as it was when I first read it.  It's a bridge between his travel writing (I actually read Tojours Provence first) and his fiction, lightly tying together the oddities and fantastic meals that come with being an Englishman in southern France without having to worry too much about the plot.  Mayle's charm (and talent for describing mouthwatering meals) transport the reader to his (perhaps too quaint) village on the edge of the Luberon and made me, at least, reconsider a goal.  I've always wanted to eat my way around Italy, but after one of Mayle's books, I usually reconsider altering my gastronomic tour to France.

The Corsican Caper

I wonder where in Provence Sam Levitt and Elena Morales will buy their house.  Wherever they choose, they will undoubtedly foil a plot aimed at their friend Francis Reboul.  And Peter Mayle will call it The ____ Caper and surround the plot with long lunches and dinners full of sparkling conversation.  Mayle follows his usual template in The Corsican Caper.  A year after The Marseille Caper, Elena and Sam visit Reboul in Corsica.  It's a normal visit - their friends Mimi and Phillipe are now engaged, Sam and Elena walk through a few properties with a real estate agent, and an oligarch wants to buy Reboul's house.  It's not for sale, but Oleg Vronsky considers himself a very persuasive guy.  Just ask his business associates (those who are still alive, that is).  Good (or at least not evil - Reboul is a bit of a rogue) triumphs in the end, of course, with the help of a local gangster, twin goons, and Reboul's mother, but that's not really the point.  Mayle is better known as a travel writer and I read his novels for the food and the scenery.  The plot works, but it's mainly there to give the author an excuse for witty comments.  Mayle's novels aren't deep but they're well written and a lot of fun - and they serve as a fantastic antidote to winter in the Northeastern US.

The Marseille Caper

Warning - spoiler for The Vintage Caper

Peter Mayle's novels read like his travel books - wonderful meals and beautiful scenery separated by clever character sketches, with a lightweight plot thrown in as a bonus.  The Marseille Caper has fewer meals than usual, but Mayle makes up for it with a bit more plot than usual.

The Marseille Caper starts where The Vintage Caper left off, with Francis Reboul asking Sam Levitt how he found and returned Danny Roth's wine collection.  Reboul isn't angry that his stolen goods have been illicitly returned, though.  Instead, he has a job for Sam and Sam's insurance executive girlfriend, Elena Morales.  Reboul is the silent investor in a company competing for the rights to develop a piece of land in Marseille, and he wants Sam to act as his front.  Reboul's plan is one of three,  and the icy Parisian architect doesn't offer serious competition.  Lord Wapping, the vulgar turf accountant who bought a peerage (and a yacht named The Floating Pound), however, has Marseille's planning commissioner in his pocket and a pair of bodyguards who miss beating up people.  What does Sam have?  Well, Reboul's plan sounds good, plus he has Elena, his journalist friend Phillipe and his girlfriend Mimi, and an Englishwoman of a certain age.  They're more than a match for a desperate and bankrupt thug with money.  Mayle's books aren't deep, but they're vividly written and a lot of fun, and Sam, Elena, Phillipe, and Reboul are engaging characters.  I'm looking forward to Mayle's next Caper.

Hotel Pastis

Sometimes I just want to read something that makes me smile.  Something lightweight but not disposable, a book in which I can immerse myself and imagine that I'm not riding a commuter train in the dark both to and from work.  A book where I can feel the sunshine and taste the multi-hour meals.  When I'm in that sort of mood, I reach for Peter Mayle.  After careers in advertising and educational books (he wrote the "where did I come from?" books my grade school teachers used for introductory sex ed), Mayle moved to Provence in the late 80s and chronicled his year of renovation.  More travelogues followed, and then Hotel Pastis.  It's about a recently divorced ad man named Simon Shaw who falls in love both with Provence and a woman with whom he opens a hotel.  Oh, and there's a gang of bank robbers disguised as a cycling team doing training runs, and the son of Simon's former firm's biggest client who's not sure if he wants to win the Tour de France or earn three Michelin stars.  Add in an extremely competent assistant, an old man with a high ladder, an ex-wife who reappears every few months, avaricious fellow ad men, a disreputable relative, assorted tourists, a sour-tempered "journalist," the mayor's beautiful daughter, a commanding female chef, and a bull terrier, season with lavender, basil, and champagne, and sit back.  It's a pleasant vacation disguised as a 380-page paperback, and place to revisit every few years.

The Vintage Caper

A friend of mine used to have a second job in a movie theater.  A few times a year, he'd tell us what lobby posters were available and he'd get them for us - I've got Casino Royale and A Perfect Year hanging in my living room.  While it's nice to see Russell Crowe in a sunbeam as soon as I walk in my front door, that's not why I wanted that poster - I'm a big fan of Peter Mayle.  20 years ago, my mom handed me Tojours Provence and I was hooked.  Mayle has crisp, descriptive writing style and a dry sense of humor - and he appreciates good food.

Movie producer Danny Roth has a problem.  It's not that he's totally repellant (apparently, that's beneficial to his career), but that no one appreciates his sophisticated palate and his multi-million dollar wine collection.  Naturally, he arranges for the LA Times to do a puff piece on his collection, and equally naturally, someone steals it while he's skiing in Aspen.  Elena Morales, the VP for private claims at Knox Insurance calls her ex-flame, lawyer-turned-criminal-turned-investigator (and all-around connoisseur) Sam Levitt look into the theft.  Sam's a typical Mayle hero - charming in a roguish sort of way and attracted to brilliant and witty  women who just happen to be incredibly attractive.  After a consultation (over a gourmet meal, of course) with a friend in the LAPD, Sam flies to France, meets Sophie Costes from Knox's French office, and Sophie's journalist cousin Phillipe.  Together, they conclude that Roth's wine was stolen by a media magnate I can only describe as a French Burlesconi and devise a suitable resolution.

The Vintage Caper isn't Mayle's best novel (that would be Hotel Pastis), because it's much too routine.  Sophie is suitably sophisticated and Phillipe is suitably rumpled, and at times the plot seems to be an excuse to string together a series of meals.  The meals, though, are fabulous - Mayle may have lightly lifted some dishes from his travel writing, but these meals are worth repeating - the plot holds together, and Mayle's dialogue is (as always) brisk and witty.  I read the final few pages on the train one evening, and smiled so broadly that my seat mate asked what I was reading.