Kidnapping in Brazil

A Vine in the Blood [by] Leighton Gage

[New York] Soho Crime [2011]

978-1-61695-004-0; $24.00

Chief Inspector Mario Silva and his team of detectives are really up against it.  The opening of the World Cup is less than two weeks away and the star of the Brazilian team, Tico “The Artist” Santos, is upset.  His mother has been kidnapped.  Suspects are many. Clues are few.  And the fate of Brazil is at stake.  It was hoped that Argentina would be brought to its knees by the heroic playing of The Artist, but this is not to be, if his mother is not returned.  Already, members of the Argentine Club are boasting about their expected victory. 

The kidnappers had certainly meant business, for the door was splintered, 2 maids were cut up and shot up, and a little toy poodle’s back is broken.  A photo has appeared in the morning paper, and the kidnappers have demanded a ransom to be paid for in diamonds.

The detectives put in the normal legwork, asking questions of neighbors and shopkeepers who know Juraci Santos.  There are those who liked her, and those who didn’t.  She had loud squawking macaws and a little yappy dog, she had loud parties on the lawn, with music blaring at all hours.  Her hens wander around.  She is not a classy lady – she swears, and is too low class for the neighborhood.  She even missed sessions with her hairdresser, surely a faux pas of the highest degree.

The detectives also interview Juraci’s famous son and his equally famous girlfriend, who is a model.  They genuinely like Tico, but Cintia is rude and bitchy.  Radiating out from them, they interview people in soccer clubs, gambling, the fashion and beauty world, and various underworld people. Their profiler gives them clues, and they even interview a famous kidnapper, now in prison. But things are not going well.  They have a lot of information, but it doesn’t add up to a lot of clues.  And does the fact that The Artist was sold to Spain make a difference?

A big clue is that Juraci was given Ketamine to knock her out when she was kidnapped, which takes them to a Vet Tech, who is lovers with one of the people they have been tracking. He sends them to a pharmacy, where they talk to the woman there.

The ransom demand finally comes in.  They are to take the diamonds to a tourist attraction by train.  When they get off, they learn they have a hike to one of the caves, which is not so important.  They have to put the diamonds in bags tied to a flock of pigeons, and let them go.  They try to track the pigeons, but the one they are tracking is taken abruptly out of the sky by a hawk. Making calculations, they end up finding a place that had been rented.

They go back to their inquiries, and ask about people who have homing pigeons.  They also question some new people, and they get all the clues they need.  They rescue The Artist’s mother, who, in turn, shoots one of the kidnappers.  The kidnappers were right in the middle of the mix of people they’d questioned all along.  When the director comes to find out how they are doing, they had him a nicely wrapped-up case.

The characters on the police team are nicely drawn.  You get a glimpse of life in another country, including its legal system, some of its underworld, and some of its celebrity world.  It’s a fun series, with a lot of humor, and a lot of insight into human nature.  A good police procedural, too.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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 This is a library book.

Machines and Machinations



The Big Cat Nap [by] Rita Mae Brown & Sneaky Pie Brown

New York; Bantam Books [2012]

978-0-345-53044-8; $26.00

“Harry” Haristeen and her menagerie throw a monkey wrench into the gears of a killer of grease monkeys in this, the 20^th anniversary celebration of the Mrs. Murphy series.

We open with a nice leisurely ride in the country for Harry and her mentor, late 60-ish former Postmistress Miranda Hogendobber, when Miranda’s Outback ends up in a roadside ditch, followed by a repair shop.  It seems there’s a spate of accidents lately, including the one that put the Very Reverend Herbert Jones’ truck in the same shop, and the one that put a young woman, hit by a deer, in the morgue.

After a church meeting, Harry and a group of friends go with the Rev. to get his half-ton Chevy truck back.  The clerk calls to the shop for the truck, but there is no answer.  They decide to go back, and they find the place strangely silent.  There is no work going on because nobody’s there.  But wait – there’s a pair of legs sticking out from under a car.  Unfortunately, the fellow’s head turns out to be terribly bashed-in by a tire iron.  The sheriff and Deputy Cooper, Harry’s good friend and neighbor begin their investigation.

Harry is very excited about her crops of hay and ginseng, which seem to be doing quite well.  She is very enthusiastic about her sunflowers, and considers selling the future of her crops to the fellow who owns and manages the Fresh, Fresh, Fresh grocery store, but she feels a bit leery of him, although she can’t put her finger on why.  But their old John Deere needs repairs.  To buy a new one is way beyond question – even being serviced by the manufacturer is too much money.  She invites an older farmer, friend of her parents, out to fix it and she picks his brain about the repairs.

Then Harry’s friend Franny Howard’s tire store is ransacked and all of the high-end tires stolen. Cooper also shows Harry, knowing she’s a car enthusiast, what was on the dead mechanic’s computer:  pictures of gorgeous naked woman and beautifully-restored old cars, most of them “orphans,” that is, cars no longer in production, largely from manufacturers no longer in production.

Then another of the mechanics gets killed.  He elects to race a big Camaro in his Subaru Impreza, and pulls a trick on the other driver.  It gets to be dead because of it, just as he pulls into his girlfriend’s driveway.

Harry and a girlfriend go to the drag races at a nearby track that they have never visited.  It’s where a lot of the mechanics race, as well as the insurer of many of the area’s cars, and the head of the garages that he refers his claimants to.  The last two men talk cars with Harry, who covets the Subaru the young mechanic died driving, and they hint that she might be able to get a deal on it.

The Lutheran Church celebrates Flag Day with a festival of ceremony, music, eating, a game of capture-the-flag, and other activities.  All the animals are there, and a collection of them, including the church cats and Harry’s  two cats, Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, and her Corgi, Tee Tucker, discover another dead mechanic in the cemetery, but not yet in a grave.

Harry, continuing to be curious about the murders and other things happening in her county, visits the salvage shop where the totaled vehicles from the insurance and repair shops go, and talks to the owner, the widow of the previous owner, and very knowledgable.  She also steers her to a website, where she learns more.  On her way home, she stops by the racetrack.  There she is confronted by a Porsche and a Camaro.  Obviously, the drivers don’t anticipate that Harry can drive as well as she can, and she gets away from them, calling Deputy Cooper as she hides at a Rite-Aide a little ways away.

The culprits are caught, and the reason for the crimes are discovered.  A great deal of discrediting happens all the way around.  The friends sit down for a nice BBQ and celebration that Harry didn’t get killed, her breast cancer is still in remission, and the crops sold well, although not to Fresh, Fresh, Fresh. A worthy outing for the 20^th anniversary of this beloved cozy series.  The animals, as usual, are fun, and the illustrations are wonderful. Recommended. ~ lss-r

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This is a library book.                                 

Powerful Forces

Force of Nature [by] C.J. Box

New York; G.P. Putnam’s Sons [2012]

978-0-399-15826-1; $25.95

An unemployed visitor to Saddlestring, WY has the shock of his life when a drift boat comes down the Twelve Sleep River right in the middle of town and runs into him while he’s fishing.  Inside there are the corpses of 3 men and a lot of blood.

The 3 men had been paid to ambush former Special Ops operator Nate Romanowski, but Nate got the upper hand, shooting them all, despite being shot himself with a hunting arrow.  After pulling out the arrow, Nate, Game Warden Joe Pickett’s good friend, packs his Jeep, torches his house, and leaves, knowing that his former boss in the elite Mark V Peregrines outfit, John Nemecek, is out to get him.

Joe Pickett is planning to take his trainee Luke Brueggemann to visit some elk hunting camps at the start of elk season, but they abandon their plans when Joe is called to ID the bodies of the 3 dead guys.  He takes Brueggemann with him.  Then they, the sheriff and his men, and the County D.A. go to find Nate, but he is not at his house.  Joe suggests that the sheriff talk to the wife and mother of two of the guys.  There is bad blood between them, and the sheriff doesn’t do that.

Nate visits Alice Thunder at the Wind River Reservation.  She raised his former girlfriend, who was killed in a previous book.  She treats his wound, and while she is cooking the ducks his falcon brought down, she tells him about a white man who came to visit her, asking about him.  The name of this man is Bob White.  Knowing that this is Nemecek, Nate gives her money to get out of town.  He also talks to his girlfriend’s brother, Bad Bob Whiteplume, who owns a convenience store on the Rez.  Bad Bob has also met Bob White. 

Nate arranges a meeting in the woods with Joe Pickett.  Nate tells Joe that Bob White is coming for him, and has been seen in the area.  He may also cause trouble for Joe and his family.  Once again he tries to tell Joe what happened so long ago and why he, Nate, is a target, but Joe doesn’t want to hear it.  Nate tells Joe how to get in touch with him through an old falconry website.

The first place Nate goes is his father’s place outside Colorado Springs.Nate remembers Air Force T/Sgt. Gordon Romanowski as a guy who was always pushing him.  It’s what drove him into the natural world, where he discovers falconry.  Then Nate is appointed to the Air Force Academy, where he becomes its falconer.  That’s where he meets Nemecek.

Nate sees his dad, who believes him to be a traitor who has shamed him.  Then Nate asks his father when he last saw his wife Dalishay and their two little girls.  He learns they have been taken awayby the bad guys.  He leaves.  He is followed.  He knocks the guys off the road and down the mountainside, then returns to his father’s place.  He polishes off the guy at his father’s, who brought Dalishay and the girls back.  He gives his dad money to make his family disappear.

Meanwhile, it’s been noticed that Bad Bob and Alice Thunder are missing.  So is the wife and mother of the two dead hunters, Pam Kelly.  The sheriff is looking for them all – it is, after all, election time, and the sheriff has a rival – one of his deputies.  He’s not getting very far.

Nate goes to the compound in Idaho, where he expects to find a number of people.  The only people there are Oscar Kennedy, a crippled ex-Peregrine, and the girlfriend of one of the other guys, named  Haley.  5 people from there have been killed in a variety of little “accidents,” plus Large Merle, one of Nate’s friends, who died last month.  Oscar does some research for Nate, and Nate sends a message to Joe, via the website, to, essentially, “get outta Dodge.”

Just as Oscar is explaining some of his findings to Nate, and Nate is telling Oscar why Nemecheck is after him, a sniper round takes out Kennedy, and Nate and Haley are on the run again.

Nate and Haley make their way back to Wyoming from Idaho, with their eyes out for the bad guys.  They find them in a hotel in Jackson, and follow them.  He kills the driver and questions the other, taking him apart piece by piece.

Marybeth Pickett, Joe’s wife and researcher, is a librarian.  One night a month, she works until 9:00 p.m., and this is that night.  Just before she closes, a man comes up to her desk with 3 books to check out, but no card.  She can’t find his name – Bob White – in the database.  Then he asks about her children and husband.  She gets scared, but tries to put on a brave face, as she opens her phone so that Joe will hear their exchange.  Bob gets a phone call, and leaves the library.  She reports him to the police, and calls her girls to have them lock the door.

Joe and Brueggeman are helping with the investigation, following up on sightings of the three missing people.  They find a dead deer in a line shack.  Getting back into range of their communication devices, they hear about the car near Jackson and the men, one dead, one tortured.  Joe also receives Marybeth’s phone call from the library, and Brueggeman receives texts in response to the texts he’s been sending to his girlfriend, who is missing him.  Joe puts on the speed to get home, calling Marybeth, but not getting her.

When he gets home, he finds out that Marybeth has been trying to get them a flight so that they can get lost in the outside world.  Deputy Mike Reed – the only one of Kyle McLanahan’s men Joe thinks is competent, is guarding them all until Joe gets home.  The next day they go to the airport, but Joe doesn’t get on the plane with them, he turns back to go help his friend.

Joe calls McLanahan, telling him that things are going to go down soon.  He tells him 3 things he needs to do.  Then he sets out to find Nate and his mortal enemy, Nemecek, who calls himself “Bob White.”  There is a gun battle in the woods.  Joe nearly loses his life, Nate is injured, and three others are killed.  The cavalry, in the form of the Sheriff’s Department, arrives late.  When all is said and done, McLanahan takes the credit for getting the bad guys, but not the blame for not following Joe’s directions to a “T,” getting one of his men killed, and another – Mike Reed, his opponent, seriously hurt.  Also dead are 3 civilians, but one returns from a vacation viewing bats in Texas, but homesick for the Wyoming mountains.  And Joe gets to have a well-deserved vacation!

The Joe Pickett books get better and better.  This one has a lot of heart and a lot of heartbreak.  Joe, who always wants to believe the best of everyone, is sorely tested.  There are discussions about important things, including ethics and morals, love, trust, and patriotism.  Good triumphs, but at a high price.  Good men are compromised.  It is a complicated book, and well worth the time to read it.  Very, very satisfying, and very good.  Highly recommended.~ lss-r

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This is a library book.





How to Kill a Museum

Fire Engine Dead [by] Sheila Connolly

New York; Berkley Prime Crime [2012]

978-0-425-24670-2; $7.99

It’s a luncheon of the Greater Philadelphia Grantmaking Coalition, and Nell Pratt, President of the Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society, and an assistant have just sat down to eat with a tableful of colleagues, when a staffer from the Philadelphia Fireman’s Museum receives a phone call on her cell.  The color drains from her face as she receives the news.  From another place in the room, a rather colorless man is hurrying towards an exit.  “He must be her boss,” thinks Nell, wondering what happened. 

That afternoon she finds out:  the warehouse where the collection from the Fireman’s Museum, currently being renovated, has been stored, has, ironically, burned.  No one knows the extent of the damage yet – only that it is substantial. The Museum’s director, Peter Ingersoll, comes to the Society, hoping that its records will give some idea of the scope of the Museum’s loss.  Nell puts her staff to work on it. 

One of her Board members, Marty Terwilliger, is very anxious to know anything about the fire because it was her grandfather who willed to the Fireman’s Museum the crown of its collection, an 1825 horse-drawn fire engine, painted and gilded, in excellent condition.  Then Marty’s cousin, FBI agent James Morrison invites her to become part of the investigation by picking her brain about museums and how they run, what she knows about the players involved, etc.

The staff does their thing, providing Nell with lots of documents about the Fireman’s Museum, including some photos – even one of the fire engine.  When the newspaper reports on the fire, it describes the devastating extent of the loss, including the charred remains of the fire engine.  Nell is the first to notice that the shape of the fire engine in the Philadelphia Inquirer is not the same as that of the Terwilliger fire engine in the Society’s picture.  She is back on the phone to James, who agrees, as does Marty, who tears into Nell’s office soon after Nell’s discovery.  Oddly, when Nell turns the materials over to Peter, he makes no comment about what seems to the others to be as obvious as the proverbial nose on the face!  What is going on here?

But Nell has a Society to run, and gets caught up in hiring two new employees, who are slated to work on the Terwilliger Collection, which is moved out of the fireproof vault so that it can be worked on.  Then James throws a spike into the plans – the FBI has held as evidence a large collection of papers, including documents from Nell’s Society, as well as other museums and institutions, and some materials with no provenance. The Bureau is now done with them, and 167 boxes are sent to the Society.  Suddenly the trio which was working on the Terwilliger Collection is now trying to figure out what all of the 167 boxes contain, and where it belongs.  It is possible that the Society may even get some of the unclaimed papers.  The Bureau will also pay for the work, which is really a boon for a strapped nonprofit.

Meanwhile, James and the police are trying to find out what they can about the string of warehouse fires, which includes the one that took down the Fireman’s Museum collection, and about the people who work at that Museum.  Nell keeps seeing Peter, who has grown more pale and sickly-looking.  She is concerned about him, and when the young woman she’d sat with at the luncheon suggests that she talk with Peter, she jumps at the chance.

Peter comes over after hours, when it is just the two of them at the Society. He is so distraught by the events concerning his museum, he explains to Nell.  Then they hear a crash, indicating a basement window breaking, and an armed and dangerous museum employee makes his presence known.  His plan:  to shoot Nell, to position the gun, as if fired by Peter, who will be overcome by his asthma in the fire that will be set in the Society’s Reference Room.  The criminals will go free, and they will sell the fire engine for a pretty penny.

Feisty Nell turns the tables on him, testing the Society’s fire-suppression system for the first time ever.  One criminal dies, the other is captured, and Nell and James, who have been doing a “we don’t really want to talk about how we’re attracted to each other, but isn’t it grand” waltz, actually do talk about it and it is wonderful.  Life goes on, with a little more honesty and awareness, and a positive working togetherness.  All is well in this great cozy.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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This is a Library book.



Mysterious Writing





Skeleton Letters [by] Laura Childs

New York; Berkley Prime Crime [2011]

978-0-425-24389-3; $25.95

Skeleton Letters refers to a kind of basic lettering that Carmela Bertrand teaches to her customers and friends in her New Orleans Scrapbooking Store, Memory Mine.  It is this store that a group of the Crescent City’s women go to for community.  In the first scene, several of these friends are at nearby St. Tristan’s Church when a cloaked figure rushes in, knocking over one of the ladies with a statue of St. Sebastian, which kills her, and makes off with the displayed crucifix, which may have belonged to the church’s founder, Père Etienne, and which was found during an archaeological dig under the church.

Carmela’s main squeeze, Detective Edgar Babcock catches the case, and warns Carmela not to get involved – he knows that she has snooped in the past, and does not want her to continue to do so.  Bu then, she caves in to the pleas of the dead woman’s dear friend Baby, who is also one of her regulars, and the die is cast.

You’d think Carmela wouldn’t have time, what with running her shop and all of the other things she has to do.  The dead woman was going to have her house decorated for the annual Holiday Tour of homes, but that can’t happen now, and Baby asks Carmela to spiffy up the home she used to have with her ex-husband in the Garden District, and which she won in the settlement, for the Tour.  She has also been working on a wine-tasting for a friend, which goes off without a hitch, except that the nemesis of her friend Ava, a haughty socialite named Rain Monroe, keeps turning up to drip venom – she’d already blackballed Ava at church, where she volunteers, because Ava runs a Voodoo-based gift shop. Carmela also starts advising a friend of one of the scrapbookers, who trying to erite a mystery novel based on the death of their friend.

Ava and Carmela visit a new restaurant, and Ava suddenly becomes the owner’s “muse” for the Voodoo Couture line of clothing he has a stake in.  And Carmela ends up offering to redo his menu design.  They also volunteer at a soup kitchen they’ve gone to to gather clues – they met the man who runs it when exploring the church after the murder.  He sends them to a cult that meets outside of town, where they are summarily booted out.  When they return to the soup kitchen, they find out that the man has also been murdered. And Carmela is listed by a nosy reporter as having been an eyewitness at both of the murders.  Soon Carmela and Ava are running from a car driven by a maniac who seems out to kill them.

It seems wise to get out of town, so Carmela borrows her ex-husband’s keys to his hunting cabin on one of the bayous.  There, during a horrible lightening storm, they are stalked by the killer.  The cavalry comes over the hill to save the day, but not until after their lives are put at risk and exciting feats of derring-do are performed.

This is a fun cozy with an intrepid heroine and fun sidekicks.  Also some tips on scrapbooking and delicious-sounding recipes. Recommended. ~ lss-r

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This is a library book.

Trials and Tribulations

The Suspect [by] John Lescroart

[New York] Dutton [2007]

978-0-525-94998-5 $26.95

Stuart Gorman is a 50-year-old writer of outdoor books about fishing and rambling in the wilderness.  When we first see him, he is floating on a lake in the Sierra with a fly rod across his lap.  But he is not finding the peace he seeks.  He has just flown up the highway from San Francisco, where he has had a terrible fight with his headstrong, brilliant, difficult, still-pretty orthopedic surgeon wife, Dr. Caryn Dryden.  She wants a divorce.

Their marriage had definitely cooled a long time ago.  They started out as real soul-mates, and their lives complemented one another.  He was supportive as she went to med school, running the household and supporting them with two jobs.  But the birth of Kymberly, their high-maintenance daughter, changed the dynamics of their life together.  They grew apart as Caryn got more and more involved in her high-powered career.  Now she was involved in creating a new office with two business partners, she was borrowing money and making investments, and she had invented a new product for total hip replacement:  the Dryden Socket, which had passed the FDA tests and studies, but now, on the brink of it becoming FDA-approved, there were glitches she had to deal with.  She had no time for a husband or a daughter, and, now that Kym was off at college, there was no reason to stay together.

Stuart had slammed out of the house, gotten a speeding ticket, and consumed most of a quart bottle of vodka he’d found in the cabin’s freezer.  When he woke up this morning, he found he’d trashed the cabin.  He tried to work his anger out in exercise, but it just kept building.  Finally he decided he would go home and have it out with her.  Meanwhile, at the same lake, a 47-year-old attorney from San Francsco, Gina Roake, notices the solitary fisherman, who looked so peaceful, as she catches and cooks a rainbow trout, and makes camp for the night.  Little does she know that she will be meeting the fisherman soon, when Stuart’s State Assemblyman friend Jedd Conley recommends her to defend him.

But I’m getting ahead of the story – why does Stuart need defending.  He drives back to San Francisco to have it out with his wife, and he can’t find her at first. She’s not in bed, or the bathroom.  She’s not working or in any other part of the house.  He finally finds her in the hot tub.  He calls the police, then pulls her out of the tub and tries CPR, until the cops arrive and call him off – even from where they’re standing, they can see that rigor has already set in.  Then Inspector Sergeant Devin Juhle questions him.  Without an attorney present, he freewheels his story, and says some things he maybe should not have, but he is still thinking of himself as innocent, and has no idea that, to Juhle, he sounds guilty, guilty, guilty.

And that’s what he tells the group of lawyers at lunch at the Chinese-Greek restaurant across from the Hall of Justice.  This group includes Gina Roake.  That’s when she hears about the case for the first time. 

Later that day, she is introduced to Stuart by their mutual friend Jedd and she becomes his attorney.  He tells her he is innocent, and she tries to tell him that the cops and DA are gunning for him as if he were guilty, so he has think more defensively than he has been – this includes not spouting off whatever comes into his head, but to be more circumspect about what he says and does.  Appearances, in this case, may speak louder than reality.

The police continue to do their job, interviewing neighbors of the Gorman/Dryden household, including a girlfriend of Kym’s, who saw Stuart’s car enter the garage at the appropriate time to be guilty. She said she knew the car and had ridden in it many times.  Other neighbors talk about the fights the parents had.  Stuart confides to Gina that the fights were actually between Kym and him.  Kym has bipolar disorder, and in her manic phase tends to pick fights with her parents.  The parents decided long ago that they would band together to keep their daughter’s illness from the public.

Kym, who has come back from Oregon, is very distraught about the fact that her father is accused of her mother’s killing.  She knows he didn’t do it, and leans on the eyewitness to change her story.  She is now staying with her mother’s sister, who appears to the public to be an item with Stuart, which gets tongues wagging around town.

Stuart, trying to find other people who might have had it in for his wife, tells the cops and Gina about someone who calls himself “Thou Shalt Not Kill” or “TSNK,” who has sent him threatening e-mails.  The police blow it off.

Stuart, still not getting the seriousness of the situation he’s in, goes down the peninsula in his truck, with stolen plates (not a cool move), armed with a handgun (also not cool), to interview people involved with his wife’s businesses – the man financing her new ventures, the two men she’s partnered with to start a new practice, and the people involved with the production of her Dryden Socket.  He collects some good information, but during the time he’s been gone, the detective and the DA make their case.  The fact that he has fled has zoomed Stuart to the top of the suspects list (even though there is really no list – just him) and a warrant for his arrest has been issued.

Stuart, who doesn’t know this yet, has registered in a motel in San Mateo and calls Gina.  She goes down to see him, and makes the mistake of calling Juhle on her cell phone to tell him that she will be bringing him in at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow.  Juhle follows the cell call and takes him into custody, betraying both Gina and Stuart.  Stuart ends up in jail, where he didn’t want to be.

The trial goes speedily on, with some good jabs early on by Gina, and then some miserable failures as it becomes clear to all who can see it that the DA, the cops, and even the judge are pretty well convinced of Stuart’s guilt. When Kym’s friend from across the street takes the stand, her mother, knowing that Kym had threatened her daughter, and believing that the threat came from Stuart, attacks him with her cane.  This causes there to be a hiatus in the case, which allows Gina to attempt something that will, hopefully, unmask the killer.

Realizing that some of the power players in the background were banking on her inexperience – this was her first murder trial, Gina is galvanized to do the best she can, to dedicate herself to her profession as she has not done since her fiancé, one of the principals in her own firm, died.  The “Thou Shalt Not Kill” suspect makes himself known, and major changes happen in the lives of the major players.  A ripping good yarn from a master storyteller.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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This is a book from my local library.





A Twisted Vine of Secrets

Deadly Offer [by] Vicki Doudera

Midnight Ink; Woodbury, MN [2012]

978-0-7387-1980-1; $14.95

Darby Farr, a real estate broker in a small community near San Diego, is helping her neighbor Doug pack.  He has met a wonderful woman online – she lives in Hawaii, close to the beach, and is a surfer, with a small shop to keep her solvent.  Doug is smitten, even though he has not yet met her, and he is storing everything and getting ready to put his house on the market.  He figures this is his one big chance at a great love.

Meanwhile, in the northern part of the state, Selena Thompson, a lovely mid-fortyish woman, who owns a small vineyard in the Wine Country, has just expired mysteriously in her hot tub.  The next morning, her principal employee, her winemaker, Dan, discovers her dead body and reports her demise.  Her brothers are called.

Darby’s very capable assistant, whom she calls E.T., receives a phone call.  His little sister has died.  His younger brother Carlos is a basket case in San Francisco, and is waiting for his arrival to go to the winery where their sister died.  E.T. is completely overcome, in no condition to drive, and he has a complete a total fear of flying.  Obviously he needs help, and Darby finds herself driving him to San Francisco to pick up his brother, and then driving the two of them to the vineyard.

They are welcomed, with neighbors and other vineyard owners coming to pay their respects.  They learn that Selena had 3 viable bidders for the sale of her little winery.  One is the extremely large and important vineyard next, which can expand its land and use the little orchard of olive trees to great advantage.  Another is a yoga instructor, who wishes to make a yoga retreat out of the place – he also has had past dealings with Selena, which have a rather bad taste to them.  The third is a woman who has a very deep pocket backing her.  All claim that Selena had promised them the sale.  All claim that everything is aboveboard, but there are intense undercurrents in all of the dealings the brothers have with the valley’s inhabitants, which Darby, as an outsider, is able to observe. There are bribes and other chicanery. Dan, Selena’s winemaker, is also interested in the winery, but he cannot afford the price tag.

Everyone has only the best to say about Selena, yet someone sabotages the antifrost spraying system.  They rush out in the middle of the night to put it back together to save the crop, and they learn that there have been other acts of sabotage against the winery.  None has been too serious, and all were averted, but, obviously there are things going on that the newcomers do not understand.

Dan’s teenage daughter, in a ploy to get attention, and to get a souvenir of her friend Selena, takes the bottle of wine that was the last that Selena was drinking when she died, and Darby tastes the wine.  It tastes off.  Dan agrees.  They take the bottle to the police, who find out that one of the medicines that Selena was taking for her illness (which she had really kept under wraps) – a medication that many people in the valley take, was in the bottle, and that she was probably murdered. A final episode of sabotage unveils one of the enemies – the winemaker at the big family vineyard next door – he dies in the fire that he sets in one of the buildings.

Both Darby and the teenager do some sleuthing, unbeknownst to each other.  Several others also slink around, spying, dropping clues, and behaving badly.  Secrets abound in the valley, and it seems like many are being uncovered, distorted, and recalled.  And to pull Darby, and her drop-in boyfriend Miles, from the issues at the winery, are the issues around Doug’s trip to Hawaii.  They have listed his house, and there is some interest, but they cannot find him – he has disappeared.

When the patriarch of the family next door dies, things suddenly escalate.  Some players seem to tip their hands, but some family members are playing the parts of other family members.  A few red herrings crawl across the road and are nabbed, but it takes an extremely dangerous scene underground for all of the twisted vines to come together, almost cutting the lives of Darby and another player on her side short.

This is a very effective mystery, with lots of action in all directions and lots of suspense.  You really care about most of the characters, and it’s not always easy to see what the best course is to take for the good of the vineyard and the honoring of Selena’s life and her wishes, but it all works out in the end, order is restored, and the brothers and Darby, as well as her neighbor, all get back to what they are meant to do.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r



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This is my own book.