Murder Chez Proust

When Adeline Bertrand-Verdon, the self-appointed directress of the Marcel Proust Association, is found murdered on the eve of the society's annual convention, Inspector Jean-Pierre Foucheroux is called in from Paris to investigate. He soon discovers that the victim was as ruthlessly ambitious as the pretentious highbrows on his list of suspects, and that almost everyone who knew her had a motive to kill. There's a famous Proust scholar whose prolific research is based on plagiarisms of his students' work; an Ivy League professor who is more interested in sex than in literature; a world-famous Parisian critic whose celebrated fits of existential angst are really just tantrums caused by the loss of his latest lover; and a viscount from one of France's oldest families, as arrogant as he is gullible. But there's also Gisele Dambert, the amiable and unassuming assistant to the victim, who dazzles Inspector Foucheroux with her startling royal blue eyes. Could she have had a motive as well? When Foucheroux learns that a much-coveted Proust manuscript, long thought to have been destroyed, has been unearthed and then mysteriously lost again, the trail of clues seems to lead in the direction of his most charming suspect.