Alexander Campion has created a beguiling heroine in Commissaire Capucine Le Tellier, a chic, 28-year-old detective in the Paris judicial police.  When a dead body is found in the freezer of a three star restaurant, she jumps at the chance to leave her boring desk job and prove herself capable of solving a homicide.  She is a natural for the case because her husband, well-known gourmand and food critic Alexandre de Huguelet, gives her special entré to the Parisian culinary scene.  And Capucine has her own connections, through her influential family.  Everybody but Francophobic vegans will love these mysteries.  Crime Fraiche (Kensington, 7/2011) is the second book in a series that we hope will go on for a long time.  In it the Commissaire and Alexandre journey to Normandy, when Capucine’s aristocratic uncle, Aymerie, asks her to look into two fatal shooting accidents that occurred during hunting season. Campion is an American who lived in Paris for 35 years.  He is–you guessed it—a restaurant critic.

–posted 9/12/2011