NYPD detective Max
Maguire returns to France as bodyguard to a famous American wine critic.
Max’s mother is French—so Max is not only bilingual but blessed, or
cursed, with disapproving (and devious) French relatives. Max is not
just escorting the critic, she’s also keeping an eye on a very expensive
bottle of wine whose authenticity is in dispute, a pawn in cut-throat
wine wars involving critics, wine collectors, and auction houses.
Checked into their Paris hotel, it’s not long before Max discovers her
client dead in her room and the bottle stolen from the hotel’s safe. So
she has no choice but to team up with examining magistrate Olivier
Chaumont, the man she had fallen in love with the year before while
solving a murder in Champagne. Olivier's sidekick, Commissaire Abdel
Zeroual joins in. Max has no police role in France but she stays a step
ahead of the French investigators using tactics learned back in New
York, while Olivier weaves in and out of Bordeaux society where he is
certain the murderer lurks. Is this something local, or is there really a
counterfeit wine operation in play? Moving back and forth from Bordeaux
to Manhattan among vintners, restaurateurs, auctioneers, collectors, the rich, as well as among less privileged players, everyone is propelled towards a shocking climax.
It is a
very rare occasion when I don't finish a book. Sadly, this is one of
those times. I found myself uninterested in the book from the beginning.
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