Somehow a simple holiday in the Basse-Alpes where Jane and Dagobert could study their Provençal turns out to be an extended stay in Nice at the Pension Victoria, where the couple make friends with an assortment of guests and quite naturally become involved in a murder. Dagobert is convinced that the intended victim is Don Diego Sebastiano, the Vice Consul for Santa Rica in Nice, but instead it’s Major Hugh Cartwright, a fellow guest at the pension, who takes the bullet. It all becomes material for Jane’s newest novel, which she must write as fast as possible as their funds are rapidly running out, what with the various drinking games that Dagobert invents and the abundance of watering holes along Nice’s glamorous Promenade des Anglais. Blackmail, black market dealings, young love, and the volatile politics of the faraway Central American republic of Santa Rica all complicate Dagobert’s attempts to solve the murder, but in the end all is resolved. A charming look at the postwar French Riviera, Corpse Diplomatique was first published in 1950.

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