Peter Mayle, is of course famous for A Year in Provance which I found a bit tiresome, and smug. I think I abandoned it before getting to the end. However, I found Chasing Cezanne amusing, light, clever, entertaining, and what more can you ask?

The hero, Andre, is a green-eyed photographer, specializing in work for "House and Home" sort of magazines, interiors of wealthy people's houses etc, and gets most of his business from a formidable editor called Camilla.

Meanwhile, in his own agency, we met the curvaceous Lucy, "Lulu" to Andre, who is a pretty girl from Barbados.

During the course of the book, Andre is drifting into love with Lulu, and there is something pleasing in this. I liked her a lot too. (Maybe I was influenced by her choice of drink, dark rum, no ice. What a sensible kind of girl, I thought. I would have been quite cross if he had ditched a nice girl like Lulu for anyone else. (Although he did have one little fling that contributed nothing to the main story....just gratuitous "spice", I suppose.)

Well, one of the things Peter Mayle does know about is Southern France.... notably the bit where a lot of wealthy people live. He also appears to know lots about what they drink, what they eat, what cars they drive and what oil paintings they like to collect.

This is a chase... involving good guys and bad guys, a little intrigue, a little skullduggery, a lot of aeroplane hopping and visits to exotic locations punctuated by some gastronomic name-dropping and over-eating.

It is holiday reading... not too taxing. Ideal to take to the sun bed with you when you have no one to talk to, but don't want anyone to feel sorry for you.

For the record, I have many friends and never use sun beds.