While attending the Paris funeral of her wealthy former lover, Edgar Bowen, the now-happily married American Rachel Levis overhears something that makes her think his “accidental” death may have been murder. Edgar would have died before ever drinking a wine she knows he detested, but that was what he was supposedly enjoying at the time of his death.

Not long after, she finds that she has been asked in his will to organize and categorize his extensive home library, in return for which she will be able to select any book for herself. This gives her the opportunity to meet and observe the other legatees: his arrogant ex-wife, his wastrel son, his most current girlfriend, and his mousy personal assistant. With the aid of Edgar’s longtime manservant, Fulke, along with help from her best friend and travel companion Magda, Rachel believes that she can discover who had the best opportunity and the best motive for the “murder.”

When one of her chief suspects, whom Rachel and Magda had lunched with a few days earlier and who appeared happy and looking ahead to the future, is found to have committed suicide, and another goes missing under unusual circumstances, the two aspiring detectives are more convinced than ever that murder is afoot.

What I particularly enjoyed in this series debut was the dogged determination of the amateur pair who, even though they acknowledged their lack of expertise, their paucity of Poirot’s “little grey cells” and Miss Marple’s unfailing instincts, were still able to work together to finally unmask the murderer in a conclusion that I never saw coming.