THE DIAMOND CAPER

Beautiful people draped in diamonds dine on sumptuous food and wine while redecorating beautiful houses in Southern France. None of it sounds real, and it all feels clichéd. There's only so much that narrator Erik Davies can do with French chefs who constantly exclaim "voilà!" and British victims of theft who describe everything as "jolly good." Davies breezes through the French vocabulary (much of it food) without a hitch, and his pacing is perfect for the ebb and flow of the plot. But the women are whispery, and some characters have accents that pile on the clichés. A bit of wink and froth from the author might have helped. Instead, it's all a bit humorless. A.B. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2015]