Reviews for Chasing Cezanne

The average rating for Chasing Cezanne based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-02-26 00:00:00 Greg Risch 3 Stars - Good book. I've read three books by Peter Mayle as of right now. He sure knows how to write easy-to-read, enjoyable books. Though I will say that this is the lowest-rating book I've given one of his books. (I gave both A Year in Provence and Anything Considered 4 stars). The premise is easy enough to understand: photographer Andre Kelly discovers something fishy going on with some important (and pricey) paintings while on a job in France. As readers, we see both the work of the so-called detectives and the thieves. It's not an original plot but it is, generally, well done. This isn't a groundbreaking book but a fun read (beach read maybe?). The plot is relatively predictable but I still enjoyed it.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-11-23 00:00:00 Alfredo Sanz Lobera Another slow read, mostly as a result of frequent over-cuteness and plain old annoyance. On the surface, this one should have been very well-suited to my tastes. I love caper stories. It seems that much of the appeal is ruined, however, when all of the lead characters in the caper story are already well-to-do, fashionable and near-insufferably smug with their own fabulousness. Toward the end of the story, when one of these smirking, sophisticated Manhattanites is suddenly and unconvincingly transformed into a breathless and wide-eyed schoolgirl because “I get to see Paris!?!” it sticks out like a sore thumb. The story did feature plenty of entertaining characters, lines and scenes, but even if the “aren’t we so marvelous” bits didn’t rub one the wrong way, the ending was an absolute blank squib. Like The Grapes of Wrath, the book just quits with no resolution whatsoever; unlike Steinbeck, Mayle had only written a short, breezy “beach” novel before he bailed out. I swear, I’m just about done bothering with authors whose biography includes something like “so-and-so divides his time between New York and his 14th-century Tuscan villa.”