The French Bookshop Murder

Book 0: A French Village Mystery

by Greg Mosse

Genres: Cozy Mystery; Animal Cozy Mysteries; Culinary Cozy Mysteries; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Don't miss the brand-new cosy crime series from Greg Mosse - available to pre-order now!

Readers love Greg Mosse:

'Maisie Cooper is a brilliant main character, an everyday Miss Marple!... I love cosy crime and I loved this book!' 5 star reader review

'Fans of Osman are in for a treat!' Peter James

'Fabulous, full of wit, mystery, romance and small town politics... The characters are witty, quirky... The plot is twisty and engaging with lots of red herrings' 5 star reader review

'I loved the way that I was pulled into the mystery... I found myself constantly looking for potential clues which made it feel like a real puzzle to get stuck into. I had a lot of fun reading this book' 5 star reader review

'I was addicted from the first page' Fern Britton

'Mixes classic whodunnit with cozy mystery elements... Kept me guessing... I thoroughly enjoyed it' 5 star reader review

Release date: September 18, 2025

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

PROLOGUE

The city of Aix in the gorgeous landscape of southern France has, for many years, been known as ‘the place of a thousand fountains’, each with its own dedication or meaning. There is not one in all those thousand, however, that commemorates a burglar.

The people of Aix are known as ‘Aixois’, a word whose spelling might have been deliberately contrived to confuse non-French speakers. That summer, there were a hundred and forty-five thousand Aixois, easily sufficient for someone with malign intent to blend in with the crowds, pursuing their evil goals in devious anonymity.

Or, on this particular occasion, to operate in the dead of night, just before the onset of morning, a time when the human engine is at its weakest and wakefulness is rare.

The plan was fourfold.

First was a break-in, effected via a courtyard, inadequately protected by a wooden gate whose broken-down boards were rotten with age and extremes of weather – from a record minus twenty degrees centigrade in winter to a scorching maximum of forty-two in high summer. Once in the courtyard, it was easy to find a window left ajar and climb inside, taking care to leave no trace of DNA, neither blood drawn by a splinter nor a hair trapped in an iron hinge.

The second phase of the plan was the location of a set of keys. The burglar knew that the one to the front door would be made of iron, heavy and old. The other, on the same ring, would be more modern, suitable for a replacement rear door. They would both be found easily enough in the key safe on the wall.

The burglar paused to consider this security flaw.

If you put your keys in a safe, that probably means they’re easier to find than tossed randomly in a drawer.

The door of the key safe wasn’t robust. The lock held, but the hinges on the other side were easy to force with a strong screwdriver and the application of Archimedes’ ideas about levers and fulcrums. The keys in question were on the top-left hook. A second or two later, they were secure in the burglar’s pocket.

It was now time to embark on phase three of the plan, the controlled and oh-so-quiet vandalism of the whole office, a strategy designed to disguise what had been taken.

Because of the need to proceed with this vandalism in near silence – broken towards its end by a pre-dawn chorus of Provençal songbirds – the destruction took some time. Then came the wary exit, carefully astride the windowsill, with the eastern sky beginning to glow a fiery orange.

For the burglar – slipping away into the anonymity of the maze of irregular, crooked streets of Aix old town – only phase four, the final step of the plan remained.

I must get into that bookshop before it changes hands. It might already be too late.

It was too late – and the consequence would be murder.

One

DEPARTURE AND ARRIVAL

Zoe Pascal – a handsome woman in late middle age with short grey hair that she refused to dye an unnatural colour – felt a strange and unexpected energy fizzing through her. She looked at her fellow passengers and wondered if they felt the same.

I know this feeling. I’ve been searching for it these last few years, not knowing where to find it – freedom.

They were flying at twenty-five thousand feet, above a ceiling of cloud. Zoe had taken the precaution of bringing two books with her, in case of delays, so she had a choice between the new Kate Mosse novel and a substantial non-fiction volume, purchased by post from an independent bookseller in the beautiful southern French city of Aix-en-Provence, a glossy guide to Le Parc Naturel du Verdon – the beautiful ‘Verdon nature park’.

The vista on the cover of her guidebook was magnificent – green rolling hills, some of the slopes divided up into vineyards, others hedged for pasture, dotted with sheep and cows, and snow-capped mountains beyond. In the sky were wheeling birds of prey with enormous wingspans. The book’s subtitle was a sort of slogan with an internal rhyme.

‘Une autre vie s’invente ici.’

Zoe smiled.

That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m about to invent another life for myself in this beautiful place.

In business class for a treat, Zoe plumped for the novel and politely declined the offers of in-flight food and drinks, duty-free spirits, perfumes, watches and inexplicable model planes. Around page one hundred, Kate Mosse’s heroine experienced a dramatic loss and was left uncertain what to do. Somehow, the skilfully described emotion aroused in Zoe a painful slideshow of memories from her own childhood: growing up in foster care, unloved and uncared for, finally abandoned and homeless as she turned sixteen. A feeling of desperation – which she knew well – rose from her solar plexus into her throat, tightening her breathing in a vice of anxiety.

This isn’t good.

She focused on drawing in steady calming breaths, trying to return her mind and her emotions to the present. Then, all at once, the spell was broken as the pilot announced the locking of the toilets so that the plane could begin its descent into Marseille.

Zoe relaxed and her breathing returned to normal. She was even able to smile, watching passengers – who, only now, were discovering an overwhelming desire to relieve their bladders and bowels – being politely ushered back to their seats. The plane banked and, with a thrill of recognition, Zoe spotted the impressive and influential River Rhône, sinuous and grand in the gorgeous landscape.

They touched down with the slightest of bumps and, from the rear of the plane, came a round of applause. With the midday sun bright on the windows, they taxied to a stand close to the airport buildings and, agreeably, a mobile set of stairs instantly appeared alongside. Just a few minutes later, Zoe was on her way down, into the sweltering air, beneath a startlingly bright sky, wishing she could remember which of the numerous pockets in her rucksack concealed her sunglasses. She could smell kerosene, of course, but also hot grass and that indefinable mixture of lavender, rosemary, pine resin and joy that characterised the south of France.

First off and, therefore, first through Marseille airport’s passport control, Zoe’s passage was very much eased by the fact that she was the proud possessor of a set of French identity papers as well as British. By a quirk of the internal workings of the baggage machinery, her bright-blue suitcase was third out on the carousel. Dragging it behind her through the smooth-tiled halls, she hurried through customs and headed straight for the counter of the car hire company recommended by her French notaire – the conveyancing solicitor, Caroline Robin, who had diligently helped her through every step of the purchase of her new business and home.

The boy behind the counter – according to his name badge, Thierry – looked too young to drive, let alone run a car hire business. Their conversation began on the wrong foot because, without looking up, he assumed that Zoe was a monolingual tourist and addressed her casually, routinely, in poor English with an execrable accent. Not wanting to show off with her excellent French – taught to her by her half-sister Maisie Cooper – Zoe replied in the same language and Thierry, thankfully, proved efficient and well informed. The transaction was soon complete, though – to Zoe – unsatisfactory.

‘You’re sure you have nothing but this enormous vehicle?’

‘The SUV is a good car, madame. I upgrade you. You will like. Do not be frightened.’

‘I’m not frightened. It’s just that, where I’m going, the streets are very narrow and I fear it won’t fit.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Sainte-Catherine-en-Verdon.’

‘Oh-la-la,’ replied Thierry, bursting into French in his eagerness. ‘Que c’est joli.’

Zoe switched to French, too, agreeing that Sainte-Catherine was, indeed, ‘very pretty’. She spent a pleasant few minutes, pumping Thierry for knowledge of a region that he clearly knew well. In the end, she was sad to leave him, but an impatient queue was building up behind.

‘Thank you very much,’ she said, adding kindly, though unjustifiably: ‘You speak very good English.’

‘A bientôt,’ he told her.

Wondering why it was that he thought he would see her again ‘bientôt’, meaning soon, Zoe exited the building, dodging a man with a rotary floor polisher, back out into the sweltering Provençal air. Dragging her wheelie suitcase along a smooth pavement, she found the car park, the vehicles all sheltered beneath a roof of photovoltaic panels so, once she had located her ridiculously bulky Peugeot SUV, she could at least take pleasure in the fact that the cabin was not roasting from the lunchtime sun.

Leaving Marseille airport took no time at all, the access roads being well marked and the direction clear. She headed out of the city, into gorgeous pasture and – quite soon – through a narrow gorge cut by a tributary of the Rhône.

*

After watching the attractive Englishwoman – in personality and appearance – walk away, Thierry Maurice dealt with his remaining customers. Several of them found their allocated vehicle unsuitable, even though it was, in each case, the one that they had chosen online.

Finally, he was alone at his counter, gazing across the shiny marble of the arrivals hall floor at the accoutrements of modern travel: the plate-glass dividers and soft, low seating; the payment machines for the car park; the money changers and cashpoints; the unstaffed help desks; the swiftly emptied waste bins.

Odd she should be on her way to Sainte-Catherine.

Thierry was torn. Yes, of course, there was plenty to love in the gorgeous Verdon nature park in which he had been brought up by his uncle, Marcel. But there were also huge swathes of empty time where he felt purposeless and lost.

It isn’t Uncle Marcel’s fault.

Was there anything more fulfilling than working the fertile land and producing high-quality wine at fair prices for an appreciative public?

But it’s not the pace and energy of Marseille.

Thierry sighed.

After all Uncle Marcel’s done for me, I can’t just leave him in the lurch, can I? If I could find the Vulture, though, that would change everything.

*

Zoe spent a good deal of her journey singing to herself in the privacy of her cab. Then, just as she was beginning to lose confidence in her sense of direction, on the point of admitting defeat and trying to connect the satnav, she saw the sign she was looking for, one of the brown ones that indicated sites of historic or cultural interest.

Sainte-Catherine – village du livre.

The same feeling of fizzing excitement – of freedom and new beginnings – took over once more. Two minutes later, her destination appeared, profiled against the distant mountains, a lovely ancient hill town built of biscuit-coloured stone.

This is it, my new home: ‘Sainte-Catherine – the book village.’ I’m going to be very happy here.

She decelerated as she approached the slip road, then frowned, wondering if that was a kind of metaphor for the decision she had taken.

Am I retreating into a side road from life?

The tarmac veered sharply right so she touched the brakes more firmly.

No, I don’t think so. It’s more like turning the page of a novel and finding, in the new chapter, that time has moved on, the action is somewhere new and different people are becoming important.

She had taken off her sweatshirt, discarding it untidily on the passenger seat, and was driving with her windows down for the cooling rush of air. The friendly analogue clock on the dashboard had ticked round beyond teatime, but slowing down made her aware of quite how hot the day had become. Winding through a field of sunflowers at just thirty kilometres per hour, the air felt superheated and parched.

But also cleansing.

Emerging from the sunflowers, the road followed a straight stretch of canal, the water dark green and placid, almost like a mirror. Then she came to a magical place where the canal met a natural river, marked by a roadside panel indicating its name, the Rigolet. Canal and river were separated by a low, dry weir. In the rainy season, six months before, Zoe had seen the canal replenished by fresh river water running over the top. Today, there were ten or twelve children jumping in and out, enjoying the autumn weather – or, rather, the end of summer in the south of France. They were laughing as they dived from the rounded concrete rim, hurling themselves onto their lilos and inflatable rubber rings, then splashing out again.

Zoe was now very close to her destination. She navigated a small suburb of identikit villas, built on the flat land of the periphery of Sainte-Catherine, each with its own garden and wiry hedges, set in quarter-acre plots. She slowed further, obliged to take care to avoid a somnolent dog, lying fully in the middle of the road.

As if it owns the place.

Two municipal tennis courts in tall cages gave Zoe an urge to put on her whites.

I’ll need some proper exercise after a day’s travelling, but that may have to wait. I fear I’ll have too much to do for a week, at least, getting things shipshape. At least my racket will soon arrive with my sports kit and the rest of it.

The road curved round beneath the slopes of Sainte-Catherine. Zoe passed a Total petrol station and a Hyper U supermarket, plus an example of what she believed to be one of France’s greatest innovations, more important than the metric system, the Napoleonic legal code or the network of impeccable motorways.

A drive-through bakery.

She almost pulled in, dreaming of a pain au chocolat or maybe a leek tart, either one doubtless extravagantly rich with butter. Right there, however, was another sign indicating the entrance to the narrow, cobbled streets of historic ‘Sainte-Catherine – village du livre’, so she resisted the temptation.

It calls itself ‘the book village’, but it’s really a town.

As Zoe expected, there was no way the enormous Peugeot SUV hire car would fit into the narrow streets. Fortunately, the residents had anticipated this problem, providing a spacious car park at the foot of the incline, in front of the mairie, the town hall, an impressive civic building adorned with geraniums in window boxes and a proud tricolore French flag, hanging limp in the breezeless heat.

Zoe parked, taking care to fit her car between the white lines painted on the scorching tarmac, among a dozen other vehicles, including a couple of motorbikes and a lightweight moped – a mobylette. She opened the door and got out into what felt like a sauna. A frail-looking elderly woman in a purple tracksuit was tottering past a row of four garages, built into the hillside, with an open book in her hands.

‘Puis-je vous aider?’ Zoe asked, meaning ‘can I help you?’.

The woman tottered on, utterly absorbed in reading and walking.

I wonder what she’s up to?

*

The elderly woman’s name was Barbara Ercollani. She had been in Sainte-Catherine for a few days but intended to stay on until she had achieved her goal – one that she had shared with no one and had taken pains to obscure.

Anyone might be spying on me.

Passing out of sight of the new arrival in her enormous SUV, Barbara found a bench that faced the sun, giving her a view of flat lands either side of the wandering Rigolet. There, too, in plain view, perhaps two hundred metres away on the far bank, was a large tree, its leaves just tinged with yellow autumn colour.

That tree is important. Why can’t I remember why it’s important?

Barbara frowned.

Is it because of the Vulture?

*

Standing in the bright sun beneath the dome of the rich, blue sky, Zoe took a few deep, joyful breaths, smiling and counting her blessings. At first, she thought she might now be alone, most people sensibly indoors, sheltering from the heat. Then she noticed a man with his back to her, in a blue shirt, sitting on a bench at the edge of the car park, looking out across another glorious field of sunflowers. Beside him was his picnic, set out tidily on a red-and-white-checked cloth: French bread, a gooey camembert and a bottle of red wine from which he was pouring a measure into delicate crystal glass.

Becoming aware that he was being observed, he turned his head, revealing his lush moustache, and greeted her in French, his voice rich with the twang of the local accent.

‘Good afternoon. Lovely day.’

‘It is. What a wonderful place to sit.’

He turned more fully to face her and she recognised the insignia of the French police.

‘Join me,’ he invited her, raising his glass. ‘Do you have a receptacle somewhere in that magnificent vehicle?’

‘How very kind, but I can’t. I’m expected.’

Belatedly, he stood up, brushed crumbs from his uniform shirt, and came to meet her – slightly unsteadily, she thought.

‘Brigadier Antoine Grenelle of the Sainte-Catherine police,’ he told her. ‘I am, in fact, the Sainte-Catherine police. And you must be Madame Pascal.’

She admitted as much, wondering to what extent she was already a subject of gossip: ‘Enchantée.’

He surprised her with an expression of sympathy in his rheumy eyes: ‘And you speak French with no accent. Was it the coup de foudre?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Did you see Sainte-Catherine, profiled against distant snowy peaks, and fall in love with the place?’

‘I suppose I did.’

‘I hope,’ he told her, his tone very serious, ‘you won’t fall very quickly out of love again.’

‘I don’t think that’s likely,’ she told him, unnerved. ‘I’m not a changeable person.’

‘Though this is a new life for you, as I understand it, leaving everything behind and beginning again.’ He went back to the bench and drank from his delicate crystal glass. The wine dampened his lush moustache. To her surprise, he gave her a wink. ‘In Sainte-Catherine, there are no secrets. Everything is known.’

‘I see,’ said Zoe. ‘I hope I don’t disappoint.’

‘Oh, that would be impossible,’ he told her with tipsy gallantry – he was definitely tipsy, she thought. His eyes travelled up and down her body. ‘Vous êtes une très belle femme.’

He sat back down, using the crusty bread to scoop up a portion of his runny cheese. For a moment or two, Zoe didn’t move, thinking about how, in London, a stranger telling her that she was ‘a very beautiful woman’ would almost certainly have seemed creepy and intrusive.

Not here, however.

She wondered why that was.

Is it because he’s older than I am, or is it because it’s sort of normalised as a mode of conversation, fitting an everyday pattern and somehow, therefore, unthreatening? Had I been a handsome gentleman with greying hair at the temples, tall and distinguished, would he have called me ‘a fine figure of a man’ or something like that? Perhaps not necessarily.

‘You are sure you have no cup to share my wine?’ he asked.

‘You are very kind but no, I must get on.’

Zoe returned to the SUV and fetched her suitcase and rucksack out of the boot, lifting the latter onto her shoulders. She headed for a tight, cobbled lane that sloped up the hill beside the mairie. Her wheelie suitcase – that had run so smoothly through the arrivals hall and on the tarmac of the car park – began to bounce and swerve, but she had no choice.

Climbing between largish houses, she found the air much cooler in the delicious shade. She came to a junction with a small well in the centre, a galvanised bucket swinging damply on a metal chain, indicating that it had recently been used, perhaps for watering the ubiquitous geraniums in their heavy clay pots.

From the well, the lanes branched left or right. She took the latter, curving uphill between houses that became more compact, most of their shutters closed. Whether that was because they were unoccupied or because they were shut up against the heat of the middle of the day, she couldn’t tell.

She doubled back, round a hairpin, past a coiffeuse or ladies’ hairdresser and a mercerie, a haberdashery, selling cloth and wool and thread and so on. The owner, a generously proportioned woman in a floral apron, was sitting outside, subsided on a wooden kitchen chair, smoking a fragrant cheroot.

‘That looks like hard work,’ the woman remarked, her eye on the disobedient suitcase.

‘It is,’ said Zoe, pausing to adjust the straps of her rucksack on her shoulders. It contained her laptop and her iPad, as well as all of their associated bits and pieces of baffling but useful technology. She hadn’t wanted to entrust them to the baggage handlers. ‘Nearly there, though.’

‘Madame Pascal, is it?’

‘Yes,’ said Zoe, warily. ‘It is.’

‘Welcome to Sainte-Catherine.’ The woman drew on her dark-brown cheroot, then dropped it on the cobbles alongside several other butts, crushing it under the heel of her black, masculine, lace-up shoe. She offered a hand to shake. ‘My name is Grenelle, but you can call me Antoinette.’

‘My first name is Zoe. Are you related to the brigadier?’

‘My brother,’ said Antoinette Grenelle. ‘But we do not speak.’

‘Good heavens. Why not?’ asked Zoe, before she could stop herself.

‘Do not ask. You will be friends with him or you will be friends with me. Not both.’ Antoinette Grenelle flopped back down on her hard kitchen chair. It gave a groan and a creak. Then she winked and added: ‘In Sainte-Catherine, it is normal to take sides.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Zoe, though she had no idea what the woman meant. ‘Well, pleased to meet you, in any case.’

With a smile for the mercière – the haberdasher – Zoe pressed on.

I don’t want to get involved in any feuds and it feels strange that, already, two strangers know my name and, no doubt, my business.

Two

GETTING IN

Zoe next found herself in a lovely square called Place Saint-Bertrand, just big enough to accommodate two restaurant terraces. The outdoor tables of Le Gourmand were sheltered by a gorgeous vine, dripping with bunches of ripe grapes. The other establishment, Auberge Sainte-Catherine, was more utilitarian, shaded by branded umbrellas advertising pastis, the popular aniseed liqueur, drunk with lots of ice, diluted with fresh water.

The idea of sitting down for a quarter of an hour with a cooling drink felt so delicious that Zoe had to exercise all of her willpower to force herself to press on, climbing Rue des Templiers towards the summit of the town. On the right, she found a short cul-de-sac of cobbles that led only to a chambre d’hôtes – a guest house – with a sign by the door, hand-painted on a piece of rustic timber: Chez Denis et Davide. Beneath the sign was a tarred wooden barrel in which a magnificent oleander grew, with clusters of pink flowers at the ends of long fronds with many narrow, dark-green leaves.

I hope that accommodation works out for my removal men.

Further on, the lane levelled out at the impressive front door of Sainte-Catherine’s octagonal Templar church, with half a dozen tourists on their way in and out. From there, it was a short step to Place Sainte-Catherine where Zoe found herself weaving through a crowd of locals and visitors, busy with a street market that occupied the whole of the square, a lovely open space at the summit of the hill, shaded by centennial lime trees. Swerving and apologising, she and her cumbersome bags navigated stalls selling olives, garlic, onions, cheese, fresh meat, local wine and – of course – all kinds of delicious-smelling bread. There were also two tables of second-hand books, managed by a small man in a blue painter’s smock.

Zoe paused because she was interested to see what he had on sale, but the look he gave her was so unpleasant and angry that she changed her mind.

What on earth is that about?

She glimpsed her destination through the crowds and the awnings of the market stalls, in the far corner of the square, shuttered and sad. She weaved between a butcher’s rotisserie full of delicious-looking chickens and a wine merchant. When, at last, she reached the door, she became suddenly aware of the huge step she was taking.

What, precisely, have I done?

There was a vast cobweb stretching from the iron door handle, through the ornate bars on the glazed portion and across onto the jamb. In two concrete boxes either side, a handful of parched weeds had taken over from what looked like deceased geraniums. The sign above all this was rotten and peeling, but could just still be made out.

La Librairie de Mes Rêves.

Reading it, Zoe’s brief trepidation dissipated and, for a third time, she felt a fizz of expectation and excitement, not in the slightest discouraged by the dust and grime, nor by the dark interior behind the filthy window glass, nor by the untidy crush of advertising leaflets crammed into and overflowing from the letterbox, nor by the filthy frayed doormat. Her face creased into a broad smile. She eased her rucksack from her shoulders, popped it on top of a square granite bollard, then took a step back, beaming with pleasure.

The name is one thing I won’t change. This genuinely is ‘The Bookshop of My Dreams’. My new life starts here – one I’ve been dreaming of for years and years.

*

The second-hand bookseller, Napoléon Etienne, watched the newcomer from a distance, through the crowds and the stalls. There was a nasty look in his eye, composed of suspicion and jealousy. No one noticed because he had no customers just then. The other stallholders – his neighbours but not his friends – would have expected nothing else, because he wa. . .