Jean-Pierre AlauxBesprekingen

#4 in the series, received in ebook format from Netgalley in exchange for a review.

Benjamin is not happy - he's been put on a diet by his wife - and it's the Cabbage Soup diet no less! (though the way it was described how Elizabeth cooked it - I was *so* prepared to at least try it once!). As usual there are few physical descriptions of the characters - I believe there is a TV tie in though I dont know which came first - apart from that Benjamin is in his 50s and overweight. He is under pressure at wok, with the amount of testing and tasting he and his company have to do - no mean feat when he's on a diet and not allowed to drink (much)!

This is a fast paced book, where several murders are being discovered every day, and before anyone knows it, 6 people are dead or have had their graves desecrated. Benjamin is pulled in because with each death 12 glasses are laid out at the scene with increasing amounts of wine poured out. Benjamin is asked to identify the wine in the hope that it can help lead to the killer. It’s a 1942 vintage, which leads to talking about a very difficult time in French history. Virgile is coming into his own, as it is one of his contacts that puts them on the right track regarding the local factions and splinter groups during the war.

As usual with murder mysteries, the prime suspect is found almost by accident, and it's only through digging further into the background, trying to find connections, that a discovery of betrayal, murder and the vagaries of war are found.

Published by Le French Book. I received an ebook off Netgalley in exchange for a review.

This is number 6 in The Winemaker Detective series, and it's working out to be a long hot summer. Benjamin is on edge, his daughter is over from the US, and has started hanging around with Antoine Rinetti, the new estate manager for Château Gayroud-Valrose. After Margaux and Rinetti are injured in a car crash - the latter fatally - further digging by Benjamin and Inspector Barbaroux shows that Rinetti was a money man who had made himself indispensable to the Mob, and has to lie low. He has made no friends, having made many people on the Château out of work, resulting in at least one person committing suicide. It puts a different light on the crash, which was caused by tampered brake lines, and puts the focus on Rinetti rather than Benjamin as a target.

Meanwhile Benjamin and Virgile are making site visits to vineyards as consultants due to the weather, and (based on a badly spelt tip off) visit the Château and find a badly ill illegal worker on site. This allows for the authorities to go on site and it is a mix of investigations by the police, and luck on Benjamin's side, that they work out who the killer is.

As a side story, Benjamin has taken the usual annual holiday home with his wife Elizabeth and several friends. Whilst the previous book focussed more on Virgile, this allows us to see a different side of the detective - his family and friends are more visible, we get to see Elizabeth more, and this is the first time we've met Margaux. Crocker is still (over) protective of his "little" girl and is torn when she makes friends with Virgile after her accident - he's a bit of a womaniser, but he makes her laugh and pulls her out of her depression. Of course there are now the mandatory epic meals, with matching wines, to be savoured over.

A good addition to the series, and satisfying to see the characters are becoming more rounded as the series moves on.

Full review can be found here

https://nordie.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/book-review-montmartre-mysteries-by-jean...

Full review can be found here;

https://nordie.wordpress.com/2016/04/21/bookreview-tainted-tokay-by-jean-pierre-...

From eidelweiss
The fifth in the series, and Benjamin is finding himself in uncharted territory and he's not entirely comfortable. One of the oldest Cognac producers (the Lavoisier Chateau) has found itself with a minority shareholder in the form of the Chinese. Benjamin has been hired to do an audit of the winemaking capability to allow the Chinese to bring the business into the modern world. They have not appreciated the history of the French Winemakers and that modernity takes a long time to trickle through. Not only is Benjamin getting nowhere with Marie-France (the primary one of the three siblings who own the business), but he is also having quite meetings in churchyards from the French Government and getting pressure to scupper the deal.

Meanwhile there is an undercurrent of secrets, rumours and sexuality within the family, and Virgile, Benjamin's assistant, is bearing the brunt of it. Where Benjamin makes no headway with the Little Pierre, the younger brother, Pierre takes a fancy to Virgile, and things are progressing well until Pierre is found drowned one morning.

Having left Virgile to see what he can find out, Benjamin is having lunch when he meets his first love, a British woman who has been living in France for over 10 years. His happy marriage with Elizabeth is no deterrent to Shelia, who repeatedly comes onto Benjamin – he declines the offer, and realises over the next few days that she is another person with secrets, including a son (Nathan) that is never mentioned in any of their conversations.

In the end the threads are pulled together in a rather more satisfying way than some of the previous books in the series and the book feels a little more rounded. This is technically a Benjamin Crocker book, but Virgile is finding out much more than Benjamin is now, and is central to finding out what's going on.

full review can be found here:

https://nordie.wordpress.com/2016/11/05/book-review-red-handed-in-romanee-conti-...

please read my full review here:

https://nordie.wordpress.com/2016/02/02/book-review-late-harvest-havoc-by-jean-p...

review will be placed over at http://nordie.wordpress.com

Full review can be found over here

https://nordie.wordpress.com/2015/11/19/backstabbing-in-beaujolais-by-jean-pierr...

Received in ebook format from Netgalley in exchange for a review. This is the second in the series (I have yet to read the first), and it finds Benjamin driving his top end Mercedes one evening, only to be carjacked, and in hospital for over a month to recover.

He is out of sorts when he is discharged so decides to go on a short Epicurean break around the Loire valley to get his mood back. Elizabeth, his wife, agrees to let him get on with it on his own, whilst she returns to their home to look after their dog Bacchus instead.

Benjamin has some lovely food and wine (some meals and drinks expounded to great length in the novel), and comes across another wine merchant who seems to have access to some of the wines - and a car - that Benjamin covets. However, after a heavy eating and drinking session, things go awry when Morton's companion storms out, to be found strangled the following morning. The concierge of the hotel where Benjamin is staying is found dead later the same day, hanging from a tree, the result of an apparent suicide. Meanwhile, whole shipments of Premier/Grand Cru bottles - €100 each - are being stolen, seemingly to order.

Despite the deaths, Benjamin is excited about life again, and starts to investigate, along with with his assistant Virgile (who gets sent to do the boring job of picking up the stolen Mercedes from Germany). Finally after some investigations, along with minor input from the police, the deaths and the thefts are sorted out. The story being set in the middle of winter, when little is done in the vineyards, allows for little time needed to expostulate on the day to day vine maintenance.

This is definitely a book for those who like the finer things in life (or at least like reading about them). The food and the wine and the cigars makes you want to open a Premier Cru of something lovely, sit back and enjoy a good cigar. The mysteries are secondary to the food and wine, and whilst diverting and entertaining are not the point of the story, so shouldnt be thought about too deeply. Would be interesting to see if this ever gets shown on English TV (either in the original French or a variation of same).

Received from Netgalley in exchange for a review. Translated from the French, it is the third in the Winemaker Detective series, following on from Grand Cru Heist.

Benjamin Cooker, half French, half English, finds himself in Burgundy where he is to receive the honour of being named Chevalier du Tastevin by the Knights of the order (slogan 'Never whine, always wine!'). He takes the opportunity to spend a few days in area, staying in the small town of Vougeot, in order to do some tastings of the local producers in order to prepare notes for his new book.

However, the trip is spoilt when two young men are shot dead in the process of spraying some graffiti on a wall - there has been a spate of slogans written in Latin on walls around the town. Benjamin cant resist trying to work out what these couplets mean and why they have been daubed on the walls. He invites Virgile, his young and attractive assistant, to the town to lends a hand with the investigations, whilst allowing the younger man to continue his foray into wine tasting.

This is a shortish book, and not the first of the series. There is not much in terms of description of Cooker, which may have been done in a previous book (or perhaps because this is related to a TV series I've never heard of, it allows for anyone to be cast in the role). Virgile isnt described much either, apart from being a terrible flirt and a hit with the women.

There are some great descriptions of the food eaten and the wine drunk (they seemed to be a little more detailed in the previous book), as well as some of the local traditions and fokelore. The denouement comes a little quick and the clues are a little tenuous to get to that point, but that is only a small point in an otherwise enjoyable and short book.

#4 in the series, received in ebook format from Netgalley in exchange for a review.

Benjamin is not happy - he's been put on a diet by his wife - and it's the Cabbage Soup diet no less! (though the way it was described how Elizabeth cooked it - I was *so* prepared to at least try it once!). As usual there are few physical descriptions of the characters - I believe there is a TV tie in though I dont know which came first - apart from that Benjamin is in his 50s and overweight. He is under pressure at wok, with the amount of testing and tasting he and his company have to do - no mean feat when he's on a diet and not allowed to drink (much)!

This is a fast paced book, where several murders are being discovered every day, and before anyone knows it, 6 people are dead or have had their graves desecrated. Benjamin is pulled in because with each death 12 glasses are laid out at the scene with increasing amounts of wine poured out. Benjamin is asked to identify the wine in the hope that it can help lead to the killer. It’s a 1942 vintage, which leads to talking about a very difficult time in French history. Virgile is coming into his own, as it is one of his contacts that puts them on the right track regarding the local factions and splinter groups during the war.

As usual with murder mysteries, the prime suspect is found almost by accident, and it's only through digging further into the background, trying to find connections, that a discovery of betrayal, murder and the vagaries of war are found.

A quick fun mystery. I didn't think it was quite as good as the first book but pleasurable enough that I still plan to continue the series.

This entry in the series had a more solid mystery aspect than the previous books. It wasn't really a mystery that the reader could solve before the detectives (a minus in my book) but still a good quick read.

This series has much in common with the Bruno Courréges series - the wonderful food (and of course, wine!), the local community and often an involvement of some aspect of French history. The mystery is OK but I read these primarily for those other aspects.

Perhaps only 2.5* - it was a pleasant read but more for the family dynamics than the mystery.

This novella, the 7th in the series, somehow clicked with me - the clues were all there but not too obvious; the Armagnac setting & learning a bit about how eau de vie are made; Benjamin & his assistant... Perhaps it is not quite a 4* book but it was the right book for me at the moment.

In this 10th entry in the series, Benjamin Cooker & his assistant travel to Alsace. Satisfying mystery though this time Virgile does more of the detecting than Benjamin does.

2.5* rounded up...

While I enjoyed reading this book, there really was little "detecting" (and that little was done by Benjamin's wife Elizabeth!). This entry in the series was actually 2 short stories entwined - one involving Benjamin during a trip to Hungary with his wife & his publisher and the other involving Virgile and Alexandrine back in France. It felt a bit like the authors couldn't come up with a full-length plot for either so decided to make a book by joining them. In particular, the wrap-up at the end felt quite rushed (especially for the French part of the story - I was shocked by the almost casual way Alexandrine's step-father's end was related with no discussion of how she reacted or felt about it.)

Benjamin Cooker, un enólogo cincuentón de prestigio internacional, culto, dotado de un sutil sentido del humor, gran gourmet, fumador de las mejores marcas de puros y autor de la Guía Cooker . Junto a su joven asistente Virgile Lanssien, invetigan el misterioso asesinato de los Lacombe, un matrimonio septuagenario, que trabajó toda la vida en la vendimia del famoso Château d'Yquem, donde se produce uno de los vinos blancos más exquisitos del mundo.