very gentle cozy mystery series, written many years ago. the main character enjoys reading romance stories and is quite sentimental about young love. he also solves mysteries everywhere he goes, which the police actually encourage. in this one I guessed "whodunnit" early on, but I didn't put all of the pieces together.

"Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon."

I am completely entranced by Mordecai Tremaine, he is kind, intelligent and has a wonderful way of words. He is also extremely funny which is the icing on the cake. My first forage into his exploits brought me out the other side excited for more of his work and sad that his seasoned crime cracker was only present in 5 books.
As Hercule Poirot has tried but failed to do many times, this book starts with Mordecai putting what he hopes is a pause on his detection work, and taking a much needed relaxing holiday with his close friends Mark and Janet on the peaceful island of Moulin d'Or. As Mordecai begins to settle into a peaceful routine of sitting by the sea, people watching and leisurely strolling along the beach, he makes friends with a group of like-minded holiday makers who are after fun and rest. Mordecai however, should not have counted on a peaceful holiday, because someone is about to be murdered, and it will take all his wits to discover the culprit before he himself is next in line...
Francis Duncan writes with such a fresh and modern style to his work that I was temporarily surpised he was not a modern writer (until I did some research of course!), he appears light years ahead of some other vintage crime writers operating a a similar time. The plot twist is excellent too!