LE GOÛT DE L'ÉLÉGANCE: A Taste for Elegance

A WHIMSICAL FEEL-GOOD NOVEL THAT'S LIKE A BREATH OF FRESH AIR.

In the midst of a rain storm one morning, an explosion rocks a vibrant shopping street in a suburban neighbourhood of Montreal, changing the life of Simone Friday forever. When she arrives late for work that morning at a store downtown, her boss tells her she's fired.
Through the window of a city bus, a job ad in the window of a bookstore catches her eye as she makes her way home, setting a whole new train of thought in motion for her. Little does she know that since that morning's explosion, Crusoe is drifting closer to finding his Friday, and Simone is about to embark on the experience of a lifetime.

EXCERPT
I get all wide-eyed, feeling the warmth as he takes my hand.
"I'm the owner. I have to say, there are two strong applicants in the running already," he says.
All my courage drains away, and I'm just about to walk out of there when he adds,
"So, Simone, you want to be my Friday, do you?"
The mysterious explosion on Wellington Street earlier comes flooding right back to me.
If it hadn't been for the explosion, I wouldn't have lost my job, and I would never have seen the job ad on my way home, and I would never have known that Crusoe was drifting in search of his Friday.

Johanne Seymour has published five crime novels in the Kate McDougall series and adapted the first, Le Cri du cerf (The Scream of the Deer) into a six-episode TV miniseries, Séquelles (Consequences). More recently, her thriller Rinzen, la beauté intérieure (Rinzen: The Beauty Within) was shortlisted for the Saint-
Pâcome Award for best crime novel and the Arthur Ellis Award for best Canadian crime novel published in French.