In November, 2000, Donald Bain, author of the bestselling "Murder, She Wrote" series of books, and his wife, Renée Paley-Bain (who now collaborates with him on the series), headed for Provence to research it as a setting for an upcoming book in the series. They reported on their trip for naturaltraveler.com in the March, 2001 edition.

The book, "Provence - To Die For," by Donald Bain and Jessica Fletcher (she's the fictitious character on the popular "Murder, She Wrote" TV series, and Don's "collaborator") was just published on April 1 by Signet. Here's how some of the travel material is used in these excerpts from the book.

Authors' Note: Jessica Fletcher hitches a ride with friends Craig and Jill Thomas to a tenth century historic site in Les Baux. She's looking for René Bonassé, who may have some information about the famous French chef, who has been murdered. Bonassé's aunt, his only relative, lives in the hilltop village.

We drove through Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, a pretty town, which reminded me of a smaller version of Carpentras. The day was cloudy and raw with rain threatening. At intervals, a damp wind thumped the side of the car, making it wobble. Outside St. Rémy, we continued south along straight-aways with tall trees arching over the two lanes of traffic. Farther along, the road began to curve and we found ourselves climbing up into the Alpilles Mountains. We passed forests of pine clinging to the rocky soil by their roots, their trunks bent at a precarious angle on the steep slopes as they reached for the sun. Then the forests thinned, broken up by boulders of white rock that had tumbled from the craggy hilltops, littering the ground. We crested the mountain, and descended into an upland valley of olive orchards girdled by limestone cliffs. The olive trees, short and full, stretched out on both sides of the road, a sea of silvery green leaves.

	…We crested the mountain, and descended into an upland valley of olive orchards girdled by limestone cliffs…

The oil made from the olives grown in Les Baux was excellent, M. Telloir had informed me. In fact, it had been awarded special status, appellation d'origine controlée, just like a fine wine. But you could not put it away for the future, like wine, he'd said; instead of improving with age, it would spoil. I'd promised myself I'd buy a bottle to see if my palate was sensitive enough to discern the difference in taste.

As the road wound through the orchards, the naked outcroppings of rock along one mountain ridge began to take on distinctive shapes. Were those rectangular gaps caused by natural erosion or carved out by early settlers? The closer we came, the clearer the hand of man could be seen in the shaping of the rock. The view disappeared and reappeared as we drove up a road that twisted around the side of the mountain.

"Isn't this exciting?" Jill said, reading to us from her guidebook. "It says the site may have been occupied as early as the Bronze Age. The tenth-century citadel was built on top of the rock cliffs, and the lords who occupied it traced their lineage back to one of the three magi, Balthazar. The buildings in the village itself date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After Louis the Thirteenth tore the fortress down in the sixteen hundreds, the population of the village gradually moved away and it was totally deserted for two centuries."

Les Baux…we wandered up the main street, peering through dark windows…

"I wonder what revived it," I said.

"Probably tourists," Craig put in.

"Not at first," Jill said. "It was the discovery of aluminum ore deposits, bauxite, named for Les Baux."

"What does it say about lunch?" he said. "I'm hungry."

"There are all kinds of shops and restaurants in the summer," Jill replied. "I'm not sure what's open out of season."

"We'll soon find out," he said, pulling up to a line of vehicles parked along the edge of the road. "No cars are allowed on the streets, so we'll have to find a space and walk there."

We left the car midway up the hill and gave our calf muscles a good workout hiking to the village.

"Glad I wore my track shoes," Jill said, stopping to catch her breath. "It would be easy to twist an ankle on these cobblestones."

At the bottom of the village, most of the shops were shuttered. Only one was open, its shelves filled with aromatic soaps and candles, linens and dishware in the colorful Provençal designs, as well as regional cookies and candies, and bottles of oil and vinegar with sprigs of herbs floating inside.

"You probably can ask in there if they know where to find René's aunt," Jill added. "It doesn't look like many people live here in the winter."

The young salesgirl didn't recognize the name of René's aunt. "I work here part time," she said. "The owner, she knows everyone in the village."

"Is she coming in today?" I asked.

"Non. In the summer, she lives here," the girl replied, "but now she comes only on the weekends."

We wandered up the main street, peering through dark windows, ducking into the occasional store open for business, more to escape the chilly wind than out of interest in the wares. I tried to imagine the village besieged by the one and a half million visitors it received every year, most of them crowding the narrow confines of the streets from May through September. It would have been impossible to find anyone in such a throng.

Jessica learns where René's aunt may be found and goes off to talk with her, agreeing to meet the Thomases at the Citadel, where, she discovers, René has gone as well.

…A lone figure, buffeted by the gale, stood at the other end of the wall…

While I'd been inside, the temperature had dropped and the wind had begun to kick up. I buttoned my coat, pulled my scarf over my head, and trudged up to the entrance to the Citadelle de la Ville Morte, Citadel of the Dead City. A few hardy souls passed me on their way downhill, their cheeks red from the blustery weather.

I paid the entrance fee, declined to take a hand-held electronic tour guide, and stepped out of the shelter of the small exhibit introducing the site onto a broad plateau. To my left was a little chapel. I could hear music from a slide show that played inside. A rocky plain sprawled before me, reaching a hundred yards out to an iron railing that marked the edge of the cliff. Dropped into the barren field, at wide intervals, were medieval engines of war, siege machines, crouching like huge insects, their wooden skeletons stark against the leaden sky.

Not a soul braved the coming storm to stand at the railing and gaze south across the valley floor to mountains miles away. No awe-struck child gaped at the catapult or its sister weapons. I was alone with the wind. It swirled around me, whipping my coat against my legs, blowing up my sleeves, tearing my scarf away, threatening to carry me away, along with everything else that challenged its rule. I put my back to the tempest, pulled the scarf tight, and stuck close to the crumbling ruins, following the path to the remains of chambers that once housed the lords of Baux and their vassals.

	…I rounded a corner where the remnants of walls offered a respite from the squall. Tiny compartments, like pigeonholes, were cut into the stone…

I rounded a corner where the remnants of walls offered a respite from the squall. Tiny compartments, like pigeonholes, were cut into the stone. I stared, fascinated. Was this an ancient larder? What had the feudal inhabitants stored in these little containers? I wandered from room to room, my imagination conjuring the lives of these long ago residents in the castle they had carved from the rocky escarpment.

Reminding myself that I was not here to play tourist, I searched for René Bonassé among the small number of visitors I encountered as I explored the ruins. He wasn't there; nor were the Thomases. And it was starting to rain.

Following the path along a towering wall, I came upon a stairway, cut into the rock, leading to the top. Modern civilization had provided an iron banister, which ran down one side of the flight. The stairs themselves had been gouged out by centuries of rainwater cascading down, leaving a notch in the middle of each steep step. I grasped the iron rail and ascended slowly, pulling with my arms as I climbed up, keeping my feet on the edges of the wet stone away from the jagged centers. At the top, I battled the wind and the slippery boulders underfoot to grab a bar on the parapet. A lone figure, buffeted by the gale, stood at the other end of the wall. I fumbled in my bag for a pair of sunglasses to shield my eyes from the wind, and squinted, straining to see the figure more clearly. Was that René? It looked like him, but the walk to where he braced himself against the parapet would be hazardous. Should I wait till he returned?

Patience has never been one of my virtues, nor prudence, truth to tell, on any number of occasions. But I hoped I wasn't foolish into the bargain. I didn't want to twist an ankle skidding on the slick stones or get caught by the wind and knocked over the low barrier to tumble down the wall and the mountain on which it was perched. I held onto the bar and waited, hoping René would tire of the pounding the wind and rain were giving his body, and make his way back toward the stairs. Eventually, there was a pause in the storm, and I saw him push away from the rail. I edged forward as he started back, timing my pace so that I blocked his progress at the narrowest point of the battlement.

He raised his eyes and started when he recognized me. "Madame Fletcher. What are you doing here?"