If you love a good murder mystery, your wine glass is spilling over now, as three new books set in wine country have hit the market in recent months.
The first, For the Sake of the Vine, takes place in Washington's Yakima Valley, while An Unholy Alliance is nestled in Oregon's Yamhill County and Lethal Vintage is set in California's Napa Valley.
Each has its own style and attitude, but all have three things in common: wine, murder and darned good stories.
For the Sake of the Vine, by Adria Lang, 2009, Tigress Publishing, Seattle, $12.95.
This is set at the fictitious Lapis Vintners, next door to the real-life Kestrel Vintners in Prosser, Wash.
Winemaker Horst Bartlett and his wife have died in an awful plane crash in Central America, and Horst's twin children, Zach and Angelina, must fly home from the East Coast to take on the family business while uncovering macabre mysteries behind Lapis' legendary Merlot.
This is an illustrated novel that thrives on bizarre relationships amid marvelous twists and turns.
Fans of novelist Douglas Coupland (Shampoo Planet, Girlfriend in a Coma, Microserfs) should feel comfortable with the rather edgy writing style.
An Unholy Alliance, by Judy Nedry, 2009, iUniverse, $19.95.
I love books that know how to set a scene, and Judy Nedry performs this beautifully in An Unholy Alliance.
Nedry has lived amid the vines of the northern Willamette Valley and was one of the modern wine industry's earliest scribes as founder of Northwest Palate magazine.
Her hero, Emma Golden, is a Portland writer thrust into the middle of a murder (or two) in the northern Willamette Valley as she researches a book on Oregon wine.
This is a delicious read, and one does not have to read too much between the lines to see some of the real-life characters of the Oregon wine industry.
Lethal Vintage, by Nadia Gordon, 2009, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, $23.95.
This is Nadia Gordon's fourth murder mystery set in Napa, and this is as good as her inaugural Sharpshooter, which I thought was the best of the first three.
Sunny McCoskey is the owner and chef of Wildside, a favorite restaurant in the Napa Valley town of St. Helena. Sunny always manages to insert herself into the middle of a murder investigation, and this time around, it's a friend who dies after an evening of decadence. This time, though, Sunny is a suspect.
Gordon's character development over the four books helps make this a real favorite, and this is probably the most classic style of murder mystery of the three books.
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