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Day 165: A Sunny Place for Shady People Gassed While Asleep?
It was Somerset Maugham who so memorably summed up Monaco and the French Riviera by calling it a “sunny place for shady people.” Read this truly astounding article about his life, the latter part of which was spent in a villa on St Jean Cap Ferrat on the Riviera.
Life was not sweet for Maugham, it was wildly decadent – filled with hundreds of rent boys and the occasional female lover and wife as well.
All these years later, I’ve chronicled the less sweet side of the French Riviera myself – minus the constant sex, nonstop parties, bestselling novels, gaming tables etc. of Maugham’s experience. Oh, well.
However, the story does involve being gassed by burglars whilst asleep…
This summer, as wide-eyed tourists eat, pray, and love their way from St. Tropez to the Monaco border, a crime wave that sounds like something out of a bad remake of To Catch A Thief has hit the French Riviera.
Residents, both locals and expats, mull it over in daily conversations: whose apartment got robbed last night? Who got sprayed with sleeping gas when they were asleep? Whose villa was peppered with shots from air rifles?
For someone who lived in New York City for 15 years without incident, some of what you hear sounds fantastical—until it checks out.
Read the rest of my story at The Daily Beast by clicking here…