Peter Mayle was born in Brighton, England in 1939, the youngest of three children. He was educated at Brighton College, England, then at Harrison College Barbados, to where his father had been transferred as a Foreign Office employee.

Mayle left school at the age of sixteen and returned to England. In 1957 he was a trainee at Shell Oil in London before working as a creative director for BBDO, the world-wide advertising agency network based in New York City. In 1975 Mayle left his job to dedicate his time to writing books and in 1986 decided to move to the south of France.

A Year In Provence received the Best Travel Book Of The Year award in 1989 and Author Of The Year prize in 1992. Mayle was made a “chevalier de la légion d’honneur” by the French government in 2002 for his cultural contribution. He lives with his third wife and their two dogs in Lourmarin (Luberon) in France.

Peter Mayle has written several books that have been translated into a number of languages as well as articles for periodicals. A Year In Provence became a BBC TV mini-series in 1993 and A Good Year was made into a film directed by Ridley Scott and released in 2006.

The Marseille Caper is the second novel of a trilogy: The Vintage Caper in 2009, The Marseille Caper in 2012 and The Corsican Caper in 2014.

A tender for building on the last remaining seafront plot in sunny Marseille called “Anse Des Pêcheurs”, is the subject of a three-way dispute between Francis Reboul, the shady French billionaire who is hiding behind his American front-man, Sam Levitt, the sleuth in the Caper trilogy, William Wapping, a corrupt and bankrupt English Lord and former bookmaker cum thug, and Eiffel, a Paris based company represented by madame Caroline Dumas.

Elena Morales, the alluring, insurance agent from Los Angeles and Sam Levitt’s companion, is also invited by Francis Reboul to join Levitt as his guest in Marseille.

Sam Levitt presents himself to the members of the committee as an architect from an American company interested in the building project. William Wapping, who has been bribing his way through everything he wanted, will try bribery to win the “Anse Des Pêcheurs” project but to no avail. That is when he decides to play dirty in order to reach his target. When he discovers that intimidation brings no result he goes further by having his thugs knock Philippe, the journalist friend of Sam Levitt, off his scooter and as a last resort they kidnap Elena Morales.

Apart from the confrontation between the contenders and all the thrills involving the two finalists, the author takes the reader through the charming old narrow streets of old town Marseille and its old port, not forgetting the history of the whole of the south of France, recounted by Levitt which made Elena call him “a walking guide book”.

The author also describes good and unpretentious bistros serving delectable food as well as gastronomic restaurants with sophisticated delightful dishes and good wine, not to mention the constant flowing champagne and various pastries and bakery items.

The author describes French epicurism in detail, the slow pace of life in the idyllic sunny Mediterranean south of France and the “joie de vivre” encountered in this part of the world where food is taken very seriously.

An easy, enjoyable and entertaining, light-hearted read with a simple plot and a happy ending, written with a great deal of fondness by a south of France lover and a “bon vivant”. The book portrays the indulgence in a good life used to its fullest, a sort of an escapism from the everyday hectic routine elsewhere in the world.

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Sam Savage was born in Camden, South Carolina,USA in 1940. He graduated from Yale University in 1968 and received his Ph.d. in philosophy from the same university in 1973. He was also a teacher at Yale for a short time.

Prior to writing, Savage worked as a bicycle mechanic, carpenter, a shellfish fisherman and letter-press printer. In 2004 Sam Savage moved to Madison Wisconsin, USA, where he now lives with his wife.

Sam Savage has written five books to date but he is known for his best selling first novel Firmin, published in 2006 and translated into several languages.

The novel is narrated by a skinny, erudite, sensitive, extraordinary rat called Firmin. He is a very special rodent who can read by an unknown miracle. He is born with an unusually large head and ugly features and is the runt of a numerous litter of twelve siblings. Firmin’s birth takes place in what he calls, “a mausoleum of books, a museum of forgotten treasures, a cemetery of the unread and unreadable”, the basement of Pembroke bookshop in Scollay Square, an old, insalubrious part of Boston which is about to be pulled down as part of an urban reconstruction scheme.

Firmin was born in the sixties to an alcoholic, overweight mother of easy virtue named Flo, who cushions her litter’s nest by making confetti out of James Joyce’s big novel, Finnegans Wake, “The biggest book she could get her paws on”.

Soon after his birth, Firmin learns quickly that he has to fend for himself. He owes his survival to books, becoming figuratively very fond of literature for nourishing his highly curious intellect as well as literally nibbling books when desperately hungry and when he has nothing else to eat.
Firmin finds out that no matter how keen his intellect can be, his stomach also claims its due.

He also finds comfort in his loneliness and in his hunger in the Rialto Theater where he gorges himself watching the “lovelies” – the exquisite naked actresses shown in late night films – as well as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films, while at the same time gorging on the food dropped by spectators.

Due to his extensive reading and film-watching, Firmin acquires knowledge and a philosophical, critical mind. He becomes remarkably cultivated and therefore feels more affinity with humans than with rats. In fact he considers himself a human at heart which creates a chasm between him and the other rodents.

After observing Norman, the bookshop owner, for several days, Firmin develops some fondness for him to the extent of wanting to befriend him. Sadly, things go wrong through a misjudgment on both sides when Norman tries to poison Firmin, regarded as a vermin squatting his bookshop. Henceforth Firmin will distance himself from Norman and mention him only by his family name, Shine, since he is no longer considered a friend.

Depressed, forlorn, frustrated and disappointed by being unable to fulfill his dream of communicating with people, despite his hopeless efforts and eagerness, Firmin finds his salvation with his new friend, Jerry, an alcoholic, marginal novelist who hosts him in his humble room above the bookshop before dying in an accident and leaving Firmin once more to fend for himself.

As Firmin is about to pass out under the rubble of his beloved bookshop, he thinks as he always did, how lucky he is to have been a very special rat, enjoying reading and dreaming about books to the point of ecstasy and to the point of substituting himself with the characters from his books or the film stars watched in the Rialto Theater. Even if he was estranged by his own family and disconnected from other rodents, he felt the urge to fulfill his exceptional destiny.

For Firmin, books were his only solace and a mine of enrichment during his short existence. He says: “Even though I consider myself lucky to have lived the life I did, I would not like to be that lucky twice”. Firmin feels inconsolable and caustic. He says: “ O bitter ending! They’ll never see. Nor know. Nor miss me […] Dry and cold was the world and beautiful the words”.

A very imaginative, endearing, touching and original bittersweet novel, funny in parts, about a rat who, during his short life, attains a great deal of culture and knowledge coupled with a vivid imagination. Regrettably all his acquired knowledge, culture and philosophical views are to no avail. A thought provoking subject.