Bennett is an English expatriate living in France with a champagne taste and a beer bankroll. Happy-go-lucky and a bit roguish, he places an ad in the International Herald Tribune offering his services -- any services. He pursues a response from a wealthy Englishman named Julian Poe who has developed a means of producing truffles and is close to cornering the immensely lucrative truffle market. Bennett signs on and finds himself in Monaco, where he is able to live in a style to which he has always wished to become accustomed (including eating to his heart's content -- a Mayle trademark!). Soon the Sicilian and Corsican Mafiosi intrude and Bennett is joined by the beautiful and experienced (in all ways) Anna. Ham-fisted goons, gendarmes working at cross purposes, French village busybodies, and an order of monks dedicated to the god Bacchus all play a role in the surprising, and more than a little satisfying, denouement. Peter Mayle continues to mine the romanticism of Provence for his literary success. A former advertising executive, his Year in Provence told of his time there and brought him unexpected acclaim. Then came three more tales from Provence, Toujours Provence , Hotel Pastis and A Dog's Life . In his latest work, Mayle finds another good reason to write about Provence: its food and wine. This tale is an adventure that manages to send its heroes through a series of wine-tastings and excellent restaurants as they seek to save the black truffle. It's an adventure many of us would love to take. The Mayle charm, once so delightful and original in A Year in Provence (LJ 4/1/90) and Toujours Provence (LJ 5/1/91), has grown thin over the years as the author, a veritable one-man tourist board, has churned out one book after another about sunny, romantic Provence. That charm is now stretched to the breaking point with this third novel. Like his first, Hotel Pastis (LJ 9/1/93), it features an expatriate Englishman, a sexy but smart woman, a millionaire, and lots of peasants, goons, and gendarmes. Instead of a bank robbery, the plot this time focuses on a stolen formula for producing truffles, those very rare and very expensive gastronomic delicacies. Mayle writes smoothly and cleverly (the result of 15 years as an advertising copywriter and executive), but the result is a book that is as phony as its promotional copy. Mayle needs to break out of his rut and choose a new topic?perhaps the colorful inhabitants of Long Island, where he now lives. Buy only if there is demand. -?Wilda Williams, "Library Journal" Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Place and pace are key words in explaining the virtues of Mayle's latest novel, following the amusing and delectable Hotel Pastis (1993) and A Dog's Life . His adopted homeland in France, the lovely, Mediterranean-kissed region of Provence, serves as a backdrop for a fluidly unfolding comedy of financial intrigue that would have been a perfect vehicle for Cary Grant. The Grant-type character here is one Bennett, an Englishman who turns his back on a nine-to-five life for more creative but decidedly less lucrative ways of making ends meet, including as a property agent and house sitter. At a foundering point in his financial instability, Bennett takes on a seemingly no-brainer job, offered to him by a wealthy English businessman, who, for tax purposes, wants Bennett to live for six months in his Monaco condo and pretend to be him. The lap of luxury turns out to be not so conducive to rest and relaxation as Bennett involuntarily gets involved up to his cravat-tied neck in high jinks centered on the artificial cultivation of truffles, those megaexpensive fungi considered a delicacy by French gastronomes. Exhilarating plot turns and charming characters--and, of course, the balmy South of France atmosphere--all brew into an entrancing read. Brad Hooper A sinister plot to corner the truffles market provides the backdrop for another delightful trek through the French countryside in this third novel from the ever-popular Mayle (Hotel Pastis, 1993; A Dog's Life, 1995, not reviewed). An easygoing expatriate Brit with a career in film production behind him, Luciano Bennett couldn't be happier with his new, ambition-free life as a house-sitter in the tiny French village of Saint-Martin. Dreading a return to London once his meager savings run out, Bennett places an ad in the International Herald Tribune tendering his services. The ad is answered by the mysterious, extremely wealthy Julian Poe, who offers Bennett a luxurious, all- expenses-paid life in his Monaco bachelor pad in exchange for performing an occasional errand. Hardly believing his luck, Bennett throws himself wholeheartedly into a rich man's life--driving Poe's Mercedes around town and dining at the best restaurants on Poe's tab. What Bennett doesn't realize is that Poe plans to use him as the drop man for a secret formula for artificially cultivating truffles--a formula that will enable Poe