The Vintage Caper (Sam Levitt Capers Book 1)

The French have a talent for restaurants of all sizes, and a special genius for huge spaces. La Coupole, for instance, which opened in 1927 as “the largest dining room in Paris,” manages despite its vastness to retain a human scale. The Café Marly, although smaller, is still, by most restaurant standards, enormous. But it has been designed so that

The next day, during the short flight down to Bordeaux, Sam passed the time by considering the differences between a plane full of Frenchmen and a plane full of Americans. Settling into his seat, his first impression was that the sound level in the cabin was lower. Conversations were muted, reflecting the French horror of being overheard. The passe

Cigale Récamier;

what he saw from the esplanade in front of La Bonne Mère was quite breathtaking: looking north, the Vieux Port, and the old quartier of Le Panier; looking west, the stylish nineteenth-century villas of Le Roucas Blanc, and the beaches of the Prado; and to the south, a ripple of tiled rooftops leading to the shimmering sweep of the sea.

The rich, insulated by money and protected by privilege, were not temperamentally equipped to deal with the harsher realities of life. When faced with loss of any kind, they tended to behave like spoiled children—selfish, unreasonable, often hysterical. She’d seen it all before.

The traditional topics of Aspen conversation—adultery, stock tips, cosmetic surgery, studio larceny—had been replaced by talk of cellars and vintages, Bordeaux versus California, optimum aging times, and, of course, wine prices.

For the most part, the Provençal might be relaxed, even cavalier about timekeeping, but his appetite is not; the stomach must be served at noon.

As they walked, Sophie passed on what little she knew about Le Panier. The oldest part of Marseille, once the home of fishermen, Corsicans, and Italians, it became a hiding place during the war for Jewish refugees and others trying to escape from the Nazis. In a particularly thorough act of retribution, the Nazis ordered the area to be evacuated in

The Cigale Récamier, a five-minute stroll from the hotel, was one of Sam’s favorite stops in Paris. Hidden away at the end of a cul-de-sac off the Rue de Sèvres, it had all the qualities he liked in a restaurant. It was simple, unpretentious, and highly professional. The waiters had been there forever; they knew their métier to a fault and the wine