There's Something About St. Tropez

May 4, 2009
In bestseller Adler's sparkling sequel to One of Those Malibu Nights
, PI Mac Reilly, the star of TV's Mac Reilly's Malibu Mysteries
, and his fiancée, Sunny Alvarez, are looking forward to spending June at Chez La Violette, a villa they've rented in St. Tropez. Sunny arrives first, only to discover that they've been scammed, along with a number of others who thought they were renting a fancy house on the French Riviera, among them Belinda Lord, the estranged wife of a Russian mobster, and widower Billy Bashford, a Texas rancher, and his eight-year-old daughter, Laureen. After Mac arrives, Sunny and Mac decamp to the nearby Hôtel des Rêves, where they help protect Belinda from her nasty husband and become entangled in some art thefts in St. Tropez. An enchanting subplot involving the cute but realistic Laureen, who befriends an abandoned 11-year-old boy staying at the hotel, lifts an escapist éclair into something more substantial.

May 1, 2009
Hardworking private investigatortelevision personality Mac Reilly is taking a much-needed vacation with fianc'e Sunny Alvarez and their warring dogs, his mutt, Pirate, and her Chihuahua, Tesoro. But when Sunny, followed shortly by Mac, arrives at the French villa, she finds that several other people have also paid to stay in the chateau theyve rented for the month. Mac, Sunny and the groupincluding a handsome former trader, a bitter divorc'e, a meek young woman, and a widowed Texan and his daughterquickly realize theyre the victims of rental fraud. When they learn their lodging is rumored to be haunted, they take themselves to a nearby hotel and resolve to find the woman who leased the chateau to all of them. Sunny and Mac are still determined to make the most of their stay in Saint-Tropezuntil Mac learns of a ring of art thieves who have graduated to murder and feels compelled to investigate. Like her previous Mac Reilly mystery, One of Those Malibu Nights (2008), Adlers latest is filled with colorful characters and spicy skulduggery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)