Marilyn's Mystery Reads

People think of watches, and they think of Switzerland.   Artisans in Holland and France were the premier watchmakers in the sixteenth century, but then the Swiss overtook them and never looked back.

The watch industry comes into play in the cleverly titled A Well-Timed Murder, the second in a series featuring Swiss-American detective Agnes Lüthi.  Agnes is a member of the Financial Crimes department in the Lausanne police department, currently on leave as she recovers from the wound she received in the first novel.  As the book opens she is at Baselworld, the world’s premier watch and jewelry trade show, overlooking the arrest of a much-wanted thief, when she is asked to investigate a week-old suspicious death.

Guy Chavanon, one of the country’s master watchmakers, died several days before the show opened, and a police investigation concurred with what every eyewitness agreed had happened:  Guy, who had a well-known life-threatening allergy to peanuts, somehow had ingested peanut dust or spores and died within seconds.  A frantic attempt by his friend, Narendra Patel, to inject him with an Epi-Pen didn’t work, and Chavanon died in front of a horrified group of teachers and parents at a reception at his son’s boarding school.  It was simply a tragic accident according to everyone except his daughter Christine; she suspects murder.

Guy had been working on an invention that he said would change the watch-making world, much as quartz did in the 1970s.  Because he was inordinately secretive, no one knew exactly what this invention was or where its explanatory notes were located.

Further complicating matters after Guy’s death is the disagreement between Christine and his wife Marie, Christine’s stepmother.  Although Christine had left the family’s firm of Perrault et Chavanon Frères several years earlier over a disagreement with her father about the company’s direction, she now wants to find out what he was working on and is hoping to bring it to fruition.  However, Marie wants to sell the generations-old firm immediately, and the two of them cannot come to any agreement about the future.

In addition, at Baselworld Agnes sees Julien Vallotton, a man she met several months previously on a case that involved his family.  It’s obvious that Julian is interested in her, but Agnes is conflicted.  She likes him, but dealing with the recent death of her husband and the anticipated reactions of her two young sons and her mother-in-law to Julien make it difficult for her to act on any attraction.  But Julien’s close relationship with the Chavanon family, in his role as Guy’s son’s godfather, makes it nearly impossible to avoid him.

Tracee de Hahn is breaking new ground in placing her detective, and a woman detective at that, in Lausanne’s police department.  Judging from Agnes’ ability in solving the deaths in A Well-Timed Murder, she will be solving more crimes in that city in the future.

Tracee de Hahn studied architecture and European history and lived for several years in Switzerland.  You can read more about her at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.