The second in a (so far) 6 book series, this one started off much more slowly for me, as the author takes the time to set the murder scene, introduce the suspects, and hint at motivations before we ever hear from our two MCs.  I recognise the value of this, but I mostly find it tedious.

Once the body drops, the pace starts to pick up, albeit slowly, and Bonnet makes very few appearances until the last half of the book.  From this point on, I once again fell into Aix-en-Provence - and Umbria Italy! - and lost myself in the mystery, the setting and the characters.

The mystery plotting was very good, although I think Longworth could be accused of over-complicating it.  But I totally didn't see that ending coming and when it came it was tense.

Murder in the Rue Dumas wasn't quite as good as the first one, but it was still better than most cozies available now - it's got a much more 'traditional mystery' feel and I can't wait for book three to arrive in the post.

This was my Free Friday Read #5 and was 296 pages long. 

I've been itching to get back to Aix-en-Provence since reading the first in this series, Death at the Chateau Bremont a couple of weeks ago.  My Free Friday read is the perfect opening.

A small independent chain here is shutting down one location, but it's in a pain in the butt area of town (probably why it's shutting) and I couldn't con MT into going with me (so he could sweat the parking).  Until today, when I got an email from them saying starting at 10am you could buy all the books that would fit into a box for $30.  He sighed heavily but grabbed his car keys.

We got there when they opened and they pointed to the boxes - they were big boxes.  If we didn't want to go the box route, everything was $2.  Snort - of course we wanted the box; we I was sooo gonna fill the box.

I tried.  It was my first "everything you can fit for $x" sale and it turns out with those parameters I was open to all sorts of titles I'd normally pass up.  MT picked out three books for himself in about 15 seconds (how???) and then ferried my stacks back to the register for me and generally hovered in that way only bored husbands and teenagers can do.

Once I'd been through every shelf, (hovering be damned) I ended up with 17 books.  I'd have gone for a second pass, but a combination of the vein in MT's forehead and the metered parking running out brought me to the register.  They packed the books into the box and there was an embarrassing amount of space left; I'm such a rookie.

Next time...

(I included the covers of the more interesting titles above, except the first three - those came in the post this week.)

I usually do a running tally, but I think I'm just going to leave it at the TBR pile got bigger.  ;)

Have a great weekend everyone.