Friday, September 7, 2018

A Riesling to Die (The Wine Trail Mysteries #1)

Author:  J.C. Eaton
Genre:  Mystery

Trade Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781516108015
Lyrical Underground Publishing
220 Pages
$15.00; $0.99 Amazon
March 27, 2018

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Norrie Ellington is a successful screenwriter living in New York City.  She's also been a silent partner for her family's winery upstate - until her sister and brother-in-law take a year-long sabbatical.  With an experienced staff doing the work, Norrie figures Two Witches Winery will run itself while she enjoys the countryside and writes in peace and quiet.

Unfortunately, there's a sour grape in the town of Penn Yan who doesn't care for vineyards.  Bed and breakfast owner Elsbeth Waters complains to everyone who'll listen that the local wineries are bad for her business.  But when Elsbeth's body is found on Norrie's property, the victim of foul play, the screenwriter-turned-vintner dons a sleuthing cap to uncover the identity of a killer who told the B&B proprietress to put a cork in it - permanently...

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When Norrie Ellington is begged by her sister Francine to come and take care of their family's winery while she spends a year in Costa Rica with her husband, who has a research grant, Norrie reluctantly agrees.  While she's apprehensive about running the winery she couldn't wait to escape from in the first place, she's soon reassured that the staff is well-versed in the day-to-day operations and all she has to do is oversee things and write the monthly checks.

But unfortunately things don't happen that way.  After her sister and brother-in-law are barely out of the country, she's awakened by two employees who inform her there's a body in the vineyard.  And when she goes to investigate, she discovers that it's the woman she had an unpleasant encounter with the day before at the winery's tasting room.  But who would want to leave Elsbeth's body in their vineyard?  And while she finds out that the woman wasn't well-liked, who hated her enough to kill her?

Norrie has an idea that it might be the developers who are trying to buy up everyone's winery to build a mega-one; but proving it might be another matter altogether.  If she's not careful, she could wind up losing everything, including her life...

This is the first book in the series, and since I enjoy the others by this author, I thought I would give it a chance.  It has potential, but I found that there were some things that didn't make any sense (although I will admit I know very little about wineries, only having visited a few in my lifetime.  First off though, was a pretty big thing:

Why did Elsbeth buy a B&B in wine country - paying cash, no less - if she hated the wineries?  Surely she knew that her business would be centered around them, and without them, she might not have enough customers to keep her afloat.  This, unfortunately, was the biggest question, because it didn't make any sense at all.  She had to know this, so I didn't understand why she was complaining about them.  You'd think it would be more to her advantage to make friends and try to work out deals with the wineries, such as trading coupons with them or something of that sort, instead of trying to put them out of business.  I'm also not sure she wasn't the one leaving "problems" at the wineries instead of the developers.

Then it would have been nice to know something about Penn Yan; there were very little descriptions and not enough to make anyone want to visit, which is a big thing in books.  You want your readers to feel as if they're transported to the place they're reading about, but I just couldn't get a feel for any of this, so the book wasn't that interesting.  There were also too many characters to get involved with.  I understand that wineries have many employees, but it would have been nice to center on just a few instead of so many, then the author could have given us descriptions instead of bare bones, as it were.  I never felt we got to know any of them.

Another thing is that Cammy said they didn't want anything in the tasting room to interfere with the wine - meaning Glenda's smudging - but they have a restaurant there?  Wouldn't the smells from the food interfere?  Also, why are employee records kept in the tasting room instead of up at the house?  Wouldn't the owner of the winery want important papers to be kept close instead of where anyone could access them if they had a key to the tasting room?  Also, when the coyotes were out, everyone was concerned about Charlie the dog being kept inside, but not one person worried whether the coyotes would get Alvin, who was outside?  Coyotes will go after goats, too.  Just curious about these.

So with those out of the way, this was a pretty decent start, with Norrie returning home to the winery, which she hates, hoping to hunker down and get her latest screenplay written when Elsbeth is found.  I understand that she wants to find the killer as it's disrupting the winery, but it's a stretch when she goes off half-cocked because she believes she knows who the killer is, and her new friends are basically helping her instead of telling her to let the police handle it.

She goes around questioning the other winery owners - who apparently have no clue what she's doing - and the Elsbeth's niece - who apparently does and tells the police, even though she didn't say anything to her that seemed even remotely like she was investigating, in my opinion.  Then she comes up with the above-mentioned idea that could ruin everything for her family, which tells me she doesn't think things through, but flies on the seat of her pants, which isn't always a good thing unless you have nothing to lose - which she does.

Anyway, when the ending came and the killer was discovered, it came as a complete surprise but seemed rather rushed.  It was almost as if the author was tired of the book and wanted to end it as soon as possible; and I never felt that Norrie was ever in any kind of danger, no matter what happened so there were no hairy moments in the book.  However, since this is the first in the series, I will read the second and perhaps we'll get more info on the countryside around Penn Yan and see how Norrie is fitting in with her new life merging with her old.  A decent cozy that can be read in one evening.

https://www.amazon.com/Riesling-Die-J-C-Eaton/dp/1516108019/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2520484579

More on J.C. Eaton's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/e/j-c-eaton/

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