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Review by Charles Flowers
Fans of Peter Mayle will immediately recognize the following passage as the most suspenseful in his mildly piquant new novel, "Chasing Cezanne": "In the pause that followed, the sound of the cork being drawn, no louder than a sudden exhalation of breath, was followed by the whisper of bubbles rising in the glasses."
The point of this novel is to fantasize about rare viands, choice wines, breathtaking vistas in the south of France, fragrances that glide on the night air only in the early spring, and lovely, lovely women who are pleased to dress in clinging pricey garments that weigh less than moth wings.
Mayle's trio of attractively presented adventurers -- a half-Irish young male photographer born and marinated in France, a beautiful young woman from Barbados working as an agent in Manhattan, and a twice-divorced rich Brit who deals in paintings worth gozillions -- go up against a hired killer, a homicidal art thief and, perhaps worse, a magazine editor who will remind some readers of a certain New York celebrity.
What shakes and stirs this melange is a plot involving the faking of a $30-million-dollar Cezanne. But this story offers less suspense than the souffle served early on in a Bahamas mansion and could easily be anticipated from first to last even by a reader who tries all 30 seductive combinations of cheese and alcoholic beverage in the Parisian menu described on page 204.
Even though a Soho apartment is violently ransacked, a plastique blows up a Paris atelier, a car is disabled so that our plucky leads are almost killed hurtling down a ravine in Provence and shots are fired with malicious intent, no reader will fear for the good guys. In the genre Mayle has created and refined for after-dinner reading, there are no real perils aside from American food.
Some will find Mayle's wit a bit reckless at times, particularly where national characteristics are concerned, and one scene will make him highly unpopular with all working airline attendants, but the goal here is to romp freely in civilization's and nature's greatest achievements in sensuality.
Charles Flowers, author or co-author of 46 books, is currently writing "Secrets of the Great Chefs" with New York chefs Arie de Haan and Dennis von Golberdinge.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.