Jean-Pierre Alaux

#4 in the series, received in ebook format from Netgalley in exchange for a review.

Benjamin is not happy - he's been put on a diet by his wife - and it's the Cabbage Soup diet no less! (though the way it was described how Elizabeth cooked it - I was *so* prepared to at least try it once!). As usual there are few physical descriptions of the characters - I believe there is a TV tie in though I dont know which came first - apart from that Benjamin is in his 50s and overweight. He is under pressure at wok, with the amount of testing and tasting he and his company have to do - no mean feat when he's on a diet and not allowed to drink (much)!

This is a fast paced book, where several murders are being discovered every day, and before anyone knows it, 6 people are dead or have had their graves desecrated. Benjamin is pulled in because with each death 12 glasses are laid out at the scene with increasing amounts of wine poured out. Benjamin is asked to identify the wine in the hope that it can help lead to the killer. It’s a 1942 vintage, which leads to talking about a very difficult time in French history. Virgile is coming into his own, as it is one of his contacts that puts them on the right track regarding the local factions and splinter groups during the war.

As usual with murder mysteries, the prime suspect is found almost by accident, and it's only through digging further into the background, trying to find connections, that a discovery of betrayal, murder and the vagaries of war are found.

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Published by Le French Book. I received an ebook off Netgalley in exchange for a review.

This is number 6 in The Winemaker Detective series, and it's working out to be a long hot summer. Benjamin is on edge, his daughter is over from the US, and has started hanging around with Antoine Rinetti, the new estate manager for Château Gayroud-Valrose. After Margaux and Rinetti are injured in a car crash - the latter fatally - further digging by Benjamin and Inspector Barbaroux shows that Rinetti was a money man who had made himself indispensable to the Mob, and has to lie low. He has made no friends, having made many people on the Château out of work, resulting in at least one person committing suicide. It puts a different light on the crash, which was caused by tampered brake lines, and puts the focus on Rinetti rather than Benjamin as a target.

Meanwhile Benjamin and Virgile are making site visits to vineyards as consultants due to the weather, and (based on a badly spelt tip off) visit the Château and find a badly ill illegal worker on site. This allows for the authorities to go on site and it is a mix of investigations by the police, and luck on Benjamin's side, that they work out who the killer is.

As a side story, Benjamin has taken the usual annual holiday home with his wife Elizabeth and several friends. Whilst the previous book focussed more on Virgile, this allows us to see a different side of the detective - his family and friends are more visible, we get to see Elizabeth more, and this is the first time we've met Margaux. Crocker is still (over) protective of his "little" girl and is torn when she makes friends with Virgile after her accident - he's a bit of a womaniser, but he makes her laugh and pulls her out of her depression. Of course there are now the mandatory epic meals, with matching wines, to be savoured over.

A good addition to the series, and satisfying to see the characters are becoming more rounded as the series moves on.… (more)