Rating: 
Summary: Amusing, entertaining, light reading.
Review: I listed to the audiotape version. It was pleasant entertainment during a very long commute. The island accent that the audiotape had for the main female character was slightly annoying. Amusing and entertaining light reading; not a work of truly great literature.
Rating: 
Summary: Chasing Cezanne
Review: I loved A year in Provence, and Toujours Provence. Hotel Pastis left me a bit cool. I bought this a while ago and let it sit for a while, until last weekend. Chasing Cezanne returns you to Provence with its many dashes through Nice, Aix, St Paul de Vence, and so on. You get to taste the tastes, smell the smells, and generally enjoy the French Riviera as a backdrop to this not-terribly-plausible story line. Characters are somewhat awkward, and the plot is contrived, but the writing is fun and light. This is a quick read -- with little effort a sunny weekend will allow you to take a mental vacation to France!
Rating: 
Summary: clumsy and hastily penned Mayle
Review: I've enjoyed several of Mayle's other books, but this one is an amiable clunker. The mystery plot is buried under the guise of globetrotting and eating good food. The book would have read much better without the dumb chase scenes (the "hit man" following our narrator) and with more meals. After all, it's mood, ambience and food that Mayle specializes in, not characterization and plot, both of which are sorely lacking.This book is so mediocre that it's not even a good beach read. You won't care much what happens in this "art" mystery because the plot is so thrown together. One gets the feeling his editor said, "Okay, we need a book in a week." I won't hold it against Mayle since his other books are much more charming, but this one is almost totally devoid of this usual charm.
Rating: 
Summary: Unexciting
Review: I am not usually driven to mystery literature, but picked up this book on a whim. Now, sometimes mysteries have a very gruesome component, and some other times they are rated PG-13 or even G. The latter is the case with this book. This novel is rather bland, and it lacks the spice present in most "grown-up" mysteries. Also, i finished the book not understanding why there had been so many copies of the painting made. It was all very confusing, and i blame my confusion on not paying enough attention to the plot, and i blame that on the fact that the story line was quite insipid and lacked a little something. There are mysteries, and there are mysteries!
Rating:
Summary: MEDIUM MAYLE NOT QUITE WELL DONE
Review: When Provence is his provenance Peter Mayle serves a 5-star feast. Toujours Provence and A Year In Provence were delicious. Mayle's sixth presentation, Chasing Cezanne, is more of a satisfying deli sandwich, thick with slices of New York, Paris and the Riviera plus a side order of chicanery garnished with romance. The Big Apple is where photographer Andre Kelly hangs his long lens when he isn't in lush locales photographing estates and their art treasures for a trendy design magazine, Decorating Quarterly. Nourished by Evian water and greed, his editor, Camilla Porter, is as sleek as her publication. Avarice is the bond she shares with one of her paramours, an art trader. While on a photo shoot in the south of France, Andre drops by a billionaire's villa hoping to renew acquaintance with the magnate's attractively receptive daughter. Since the mansion is shuttered for the season, he is surprised to see what appears to be the family Cezanne leave in a "dirty blue Renault" plumber's van. Unable to forget this puzzling scene, Andre contacts an upscale gallery owner who deals in Impressionists, the patrician Cyrus Pine. (Think Peter O'Toole "in a gray tweed suit of European cut, a pale-blue shirt, and a butter-colored silk bow tie.") Having learned at Eton that "coming top" or winning is the only way to go, the dealer smells skullduggery and a whopping commission. While Cyrus does some investigating, Andre warms himself during Manhattan's dank winter with his agent, Lucy, a Barbadian beauty sporting a mop of black curls and skin color "halfway between chocolate and honey." The potage thickens when Andre's apartment is ransacked, and it is learned that the painting now hanging in the Cap Ferrat villa is a skillful forgery. Deciding the copyist is Franzen, a corpulent Dutch forger living in Paris, Andre, Cyrus and Lucy head for the City of Light, where an elevator is "of that particular Gallic size which encourages close personal relationships." Mayle is, of course, the most congenial of travel guides as the trio romps down the Boulevard Saint-Germain, up the Eiffel Tower and along the Seine. He's as urbanely witty as ever and still turns an intoxicating phrase: "...the sound of the cork being drawn, no louder than a sudden exhalation of breath, was followed by the whisper of bubbles rising in the glass." Less adroit when describing the murderous Paradou who stalks the trio, the author cooks up a careening chase through Cannes, Antibes and back to Cap Ferrat. With Chasing Cezanne Mayle brings to mind an accomplished boulevardier who has mastered each glance, inflection, and compliment. He knows he can easily charm, and he does.
Rating:
Summary: Fun n' fluffy read from the purveyor of all things francais!
Review: I can't get enough of Peter Mayle, & that includes this breezy, pond-hopping mystery with a twist of urbane humor. I would have preferred another narrator/reader. I like Ken Howard (something of a dish, wouldn't you say?) but he leaves something to be desired in his rather wooden presentation of "CEZANNE." Nice to have a non-white love interest in a story like this though...refreshing!
Rating:
Summary: Light and Entertaining
Review: I enjoyed this book on tape. The characters are all very colorful in their stylish upper crust manner. It gives you a sense of what people are like in the art world.
Rating:
Summary: am i the only one who did not "get" this?
Review: a disappointment. while the descriptions of place and food were wonderful, as always with mayle, the plot involving a real Cezanne painting and not one, but two, copies, never made sense to me. if someone else can explain the plot to me, i'd appreciate it. the owner of the Cezanne arranges to have it removed from his house and copied. Holtz was going to arrange to sell the copy as the original? and return the original to the owner along with some of the money? was Pine also going to arrange to sell a copy? or the original? was there ever a second copy? what happened, or was going to happen, to it? what role did the magazine editor play in all this? in addition to not being able to understand people's motives, i too thought that many of the plot developments were improbable. the characters repeatedly failed to recognize the obvious and they kept secrets from one another for no apparent reason. in retrospect, a most unsatisfying read.
Rating: 
Summary: a page turner!
Review: you can't put this book down until you finish it! mayle's writing style is addictive. read it!
Rating:
Summary: VINTAGE MAYLE
Review: Chasing Cezanne isn't Mayle's best book, but it's still vintage Mayle--a fun romp through the French countryside. And, as usual, Mayle brings his special brand of magic to this book as well--he captures the essence of Provence and somehow manages to convey it with crystal clarity and lots of laughs.
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