Grand Cru Heist

Grand Cru Heist by Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noel Balen   149 pages

 Book 2 in the Winemaker Detective Series

The Winemaker Detective Series has been adapted for television and is a HUGE hit in France, Belgium, and Switzerland. The premise for the books (and the show) follows master winemaker Benjamin Cooker and his assistant Virgile Lanssien as they solve mysteries in vineyards throughout France.

In this episode, Cooper gets mugged and his car stolen one night in Paris. He is quite shaken about the incident and retreats to the region around Tours (France) to recover. There he meets a man who is driving a classic Morgan with a voluptuous woman on his arm and seems to know almost as much as Cooper about wines.

 Then the woman turns up in shallow grave, the bartender is found hanging nearby, and the man with the Morgan has disappeared. On top of all that, someone has been breaking into nearby wineries and stealing only the Grand Cru Classe bottles.

There’s not much to this novel.  It lacks tension. However, the authors do know their wineries and their wines. Cooper and Lanssien are more interested in  who’s stealing the wines thatn they are about the two deaths.

 I give this novel 2 out of 5 stars.