The Chardonnay Charade

Another good read by Ellen Crosby in her Wine country Series.  This is one of the few series books that I read.  I admit it's not totally for the plot which is why I pick most of my mysteries, but it's also the subject: wine.

After her mother died, Lucie Montgomery decided to take over the Virginia vineyard so the mysteries always take place in that setting.  She has a tendency to do things the way her mother would do them and that creates tension between herself and her winemaster, Quinn who was hired by her parents and is from California.  There's a vast difference in how you grow wine in Virginia and how you grow it in California. 

Usually in her books the dead body shows up in the 1st or 2nd chapter which sets the mystery in motion.  The plots are usually just so-so, but the wine tibits and her smooth depiction of Southern culture make the novels a fun and worthwhile read.  There's always an obscure fact or two revealed regarding Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln, Robert E Lee just to name a few of the historical figures that provide plenty of interesting details as a backdrop to the beautiful landscape of rural Virginia.  

Of course there's a little of Murder She Wrote in this series because Lucie becomes very involved in investigating the crimes.  On  some occasions the scenes don't really come off  as feasible.  In one of her books Lucie pulls a  drowned  woman from the car wreckage under water, but given Lucie's body size and the fact that she needs a cane for walking doesn't really seem like she could do that.  And when it is obvious that the person is dead why not just let the police do it if you have some type of a physical handicap.  It would be different if the person was alive still.  So every now and then there is a scene that doesn't quite work in my view.  That scene is not in this book but in this book the last scene is just too flat.  The 2 sections that follow the end are interesting though. They are informational about wine and wine making.

I always enjoy her books though because of the subject matter and  the picturesque charm of the Virginia landscape.  She has a great sense of place in her novels.