The Curse of La Fontaine

In the sixth book of M. L. Longworth’s series, Verlaque and Bonnet contend with a centuries-old fountain that just might be cursed

Chef Bear Valets has just opened his own restaurant, La Fontaine, in Aix-en-Provence. It’s an immediate success—great reviews and a loyal clientele, including Verlaque and Bonnet. But when he decides to extend his restaurant’s seating into a historic courtyard, some very powerful neighbors are against him. The historical society wants the courtyard, which had witnessed the seventeenth-century hanging of an innocent man and the 1943 murder of two resistance fighters by the Gestapo, to remain untouched. Valets charges on, but he has to temporarily close the restaurant when a skeleton is unearthed in the garden, buried in shallow ground next to an ancient stone fountain. La Fontaine reopens, but when Valets begins receiving threatening letters, he becomes convinced that his life is in danger. And then the fountain, for only the third time in 352 years, stops running. By disturbing the garden, has Bear triggered a sixteenth-century curse? And can newlyweds Verlaque and Bonnet solve the mystery before someone else ends up dead?

M. L. Longworth has lived in Aix-en-Provence since 1997. She has written about the region for the Washington Post, the Times (London), the Independent (London), and Bon Appetit. She is the author of a bilingual collection of essays, Une Americaine en Provence. She divides her time between Aix and Paris, where she teaches writing at NYU’s Paris campus.