A Noël Killing is M. L. Longworth’s eighth Provençal mystery, featuring the examining magistrate Antoine Verlaque and his delightful wife and law school professor Marine Bonnet. Christmas is uncomfortable for Verlaque. The streets of Aix-en-Provence, a small town near Marseille, are annoyingly busy, as are the restaurants, and worse, the festivities remind Verlaque of his own disappointing childhood.

This year, Marine has an unfathomable desire—unfathomable to Verlaque anyway—to attend the Cathedral Saint Sauveur’s annual carol sing. As part of the celebration, vendors from Aix’s sister cities in Europe, Africa, and North America prepare a celebratory buffet. While the dinner is in full swing, an American expatriate, Cole Hainsby, drops dead from what appears to be a heart attack, but the coroner quickly determines the cause was poison. The suspect list is as long as the buffet line. Hainsby owed money to a Marseille hood, his wife’s boss is shadier than an acacia tree, and the organizer of the carol sing is a woman with an old grudge against him.

A Noël Killing is a delightful cozy mystery. Its French Mediterranean setting is rich with local color and foods and wines. Verlaque’s style is good-natured and his detection is almost whimsical. The clues are few and there are times when Verlaque stops questioning a witness just as he’s arriving at a crucial fact. Marine’s role is limited, but she acts as a sounding board and as Verlaque’s conscience. She also knows a great wine and how to pick a fine restaurant. A Noël Killing is an entertaining novel that will appeal as much to the armchair traveler as to readers of erudite mysteries.