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Wine
expert Benjamin Cooker travels to the French capital, where his is
called to help care for some vineyards in Montmartre, a
neighborhood full of memories for him. He stops in on an old
friend. Arthur Solacroup left the Foreign Legion to open a wine
shop good enough to be in the Cooker Guide. But an attempted
murder brings the past back into the present. But which past? The
winemaker detective and his assistant Virgile want to know more,
and their investigation leads them from the the sands of Djibouti
to the vineyards of Côte du Rhône.
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*Copy provided by NetGalley in
exchange for an honest review. *
And the winemaker detective and his
assistant are back! This time they travel to Paris, Benjamin to visit
an old friend and Virgil to attend a marathon. But the visit to the
favorite wine shop in Paris goes far away from expected. Benjamin is
witnessing an attempted murder, his friend has been attacked, and
possibly killed, if Benjamin hasn't show up. His old friend, a former
member of The Foreign Legion, now is helpless in bed in coma.
The winemaker detective has a difficult
task in front of him. Who would like to kill a winemaker? Is it just
a robbery that turns out wrong or is it something more? Does his past
as a member of The Foreign Legion have something to do with it? But
nothing, nothing can prepare Benjamin for the truth he discovers, the
truth so unexpected that will literally leave him with his jaw
dropped.
In this part of The Winemaker Detective
Series, we can enter in Benjamin's life when he was young. The visit
to Paris brings him old memories of a forgotten love, a woman once
close to his heart. But he never regrets his choice, he loves
Elizabeth, his wife, from the bottom of his heart. Every other woman
in his life is just a distant memory.
Even this time, the story doesn't lack
the wine supply. From Cuvee Vieilles Vignes to Chateauneuf-Du-Pape,
you can almost smell the aroma and taste the wine in your mouth. The
descriptions of the wines are so vivid and colorful, I almost emptied
my own wine supply while reading. The author really knows how to
distract reader's attention.
What I noticed different from previous
Winemaker Detective stories is the pace of the story. While in
previous stories it went up and down with a new mystery around the
corner, this time it is more steady with less turn-overs. But the end
is a real cherry on the top of the cake. It comes so unexpectedly
after that steady pace, a real „BAM“ coming out of nowhere! I was
going to give up reading, some parts were very slow (according to
me), but the end left me with my mouth opened and I must say to the
author: „Well done!“. Because the end saved the story, I am
rating it with four stars.
My opinion: 4 / 5.
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