“In vino veritas. In wine there is truth.” This aphorism is the backbone of The Merlot Murders, the first in a series of enjoyable wine-country mysteries imagined by local author Ellen Crosby. Crosby has created a suspenseful realm centered in Atoka, a tiny town adjacent to Middleburg in Virginia. There Civil War history is rich and the land is fertile not only for growing grapes, but also for her engaging heroine Lucie Montgomery to solve a myriad of problems and murders.

Lucie, who inherits a large estate owned by her Scottish ancestors since the French and Indian War, also finds herself in a world of troubles when her father, Leland, dies in an apparent gun accident in the Merlot block of their vineyard. After recuperating from a bad car crash at her French mother’s country house in France, she must return to Virginia for the funeral of her father and settle family matters with her money-grubbing older brother, Eli, and fragile younger sister, Mia. At home she also finds an increasingly decrepit house with unpaid bills piled in corners and an abrasive new enologist and viticulturist, Quinn Santori.

Lucie must make a decision: whether to keep her ancestral home, Highland House, and work with the gruff, difficult Quinn to make her deceased mother’s vineyards profitable, or sell it and its land to pay her father’s pressing debts. Her tiny town is awash in rumors about her family and speculation about whether they will put their estate on the market. In addition, her alcoholic godfather and local restaurant chef, Fitz Pico, is telling anyone who will listen that Leland’s death was no accident. When Fitz ends up asphyxiated in a wine tank, Lucie realizes that she has more to worry about than just money and her vineyard.

As a whodunit fan opposed to spoilers, I won’t go further in describing the plot. Lucie is an intriguing character, however, and one who deserves further exploration. Disabled and lonely after her accident, she has slowed her pace and taken time to reflect while repairing her mother’s dilapidated country house in France. After living a less hurried and more sensual life in Grasse, an historic center of the French perfume industry, Lucie sees the opportunity for a fresh start with her return home, and longs to apply herself to a new era in her family’s history of cultivating grapes and bottling wine.

In the midst of this mystery, the characters provide enjoyable details about wine-making itself. Lucie and Quinn hold a tasting, and the narrative reveals the slow and exacting process through which wine is made: the ripening and harvesting of the grapes, fermentation, and the aging process. After remembering that her mother believed in Thomas Jefferson’s vision that Virginia could be a great wine-making region, Lucie feels prepared to prove him right. Although ornery, her new vintner and viticulturist from California is forward-thinking. He wants to expand their operations by working with New World varietals in addition to the traditional vitis vinifera, the so-called noble grapes that her mother had imported from the Old World. While worried about prohibitive upfront costs, she finds herself open to the idea of revamping the vineyard and seeing it through the lens of Quinn’s ambition.

Lucie’s l’attachement du terroir, or love of the land, is more subtle and focused than the famed Scarlett O’Hara’s, but equally heartfelt. It is the soil in which the author plants seeds for The Merlot Murders and her subsequent wine-oriented thrillers: The Chardonnay Charade, The Bordeaux Betrayal, The Riesling Retribution, and The Viognier Vendetta. So enjoy Ellen Crosby’s first book in the series with a glass of Merlot in hand, and take the time to savor both fully.

< Prev		Next >