Take Death In The Vines (Verlaque And Bonnet #3) Chronicled By M.L. Longworth Expressed As E-Text

think I'm getting addicted to these series, As I finished this one I immediately picked up the next one, The owner of the winery that Helene Paulik works for has discovered that random bottles of wine are disappearing, some very rare, some notso rare, and they know it is an inside job.
Judge Antoine Verlaque hires a former wine thief turned connoisseur to help investigate,

A young woman is found raped amp strangulated, while recovering in the hospital she suddenly dies from heart failure an older woman w/ the onset of Alzheimer's who causes an untold amount of problems for her neighbors goes missing, eventually to be found dead coshed in the head w/ a rock in the aforementioned vineyard and third woman is found dead, also raped amp strangulated in her apartment.


Verlaque requests the aid of his girlfriend, law professor, Marine Bonnet with investigating the disappearance of Marine's neighbor, the woman w/ Alzheimer's.


I can not quite put my finger on why I didn't particularly care for this one I think maybe it was incomplete.


We were never told much about the two women who were raped amp murdered there wasn't enough story of the missing wine and the thing I found really off was when one of the suspects turned out to be the newest member of Verlaque's cigar club, another member got very nasty rude w/ Verlaque for doing his job and questioning the man.


This book also lacked the rich dining experiences amp personal touch between Verlaque amp Marine,

From my experience, every series has it's disappointing installment, so far as I have read, this is the one, I havemore remaining in the series, I hope the others read better, The novel starts out with a mysterious theft at a vineyard, Soon afterwards, when a young woman is attacked and an older woman turns up murdered in the vineyard where the theft occurred, the police realize there is a lot more at stake than a few bottles of wine.


The main characters of this mystery series are the trustworthy and hardworking Judge Antoine Verlaque and his girlfriend Marine Bonnet, Verlaque is the kind of person you want on a case like this, He pays attention, keeps his cool, and finds ways to be compassionate and personable to victims, suspects, and coworkers alike,

Marine is quick and clever, kind and beautiful, and independent despite a strong affection for the hardworking Verlaque, Author M. L. Longworth includes just enough relationship details to keep the reader actively rooting for the couple without distracting from the murder mystery at hand.


The cast of characters is rounded out by a variety of locals, both on the police force and off, who find themselves helping and hindering the investigation.
In fact, one gets the impression that crimes in Verlaques Aix are solved in large part thanks to gossip and snooping as much

as official police work.


Descriptions of Aix and the food and wine found there contribute an air of indulgence to the slowpaced drama, and at times the novel reads more like an epicurean escape rather than a crime thriller.
But Longworth weaves the two aspects of the story together into a drinkable blend, guaranteed to go down easy, SPOILER ALERTS and ADULT CONTENT AHEAD
it's completely unselfaware Peter Mayle meets tropey and trite Dean Koontz,

this book made me Irrationally Angry, in a general sense, the writing is stilted and the descriptions are heavyhanded and the dialogue sounds like it was copy/pasted from a google translation of French to English, and NONE of the characters are remotely charming or endearing.
the author writes about France like some Ivyleague waitlisted midwestern dilettante who went abroad for one semester of their junior year of college and would now refer to that experience as 'lifechanging'.
the names dropped, both of wine and geographic locations, the restaurants visited by the boring, shallow main character, the cars driven, the streets travelled, EVERYTHING drips with bourgeois observation meant to impress, what i suspect is, an equally bourgeois reading audience.
everyone appreciates wine and everyone drives a luxury vehicle and everyone knows what Hermes is and everyone barely holds back their scorn for the local working class people and everyone is reading something edifying and desperately uninteresting.
AND AND! the cherry on top of this gross pile of drivel when the main character discusses his childhood grooming and sexual assault from the ages oftoat the hands of his mom's thirtyfour year old ladyfriend, instead of creating a genuine moment of empathy for the characters or the reader, or examining in any real way how this experience shaped the main character's life and choices and personality, the main character instead mocks his girlfriend's justifiably shocked and horrified reaction.
He then proceeds to claim that he was old enough to know what he was doing AT THIRTEEN TRULY because he feels a thirteen yearold understands love, that he loved his abuser in some way, and then brushes off his girlfriend's assertion that he must have been so confused by it all.
for all the research the author seems to have done on Michelin three star restaurants and luxury sports cars and provencal wines and obscure twentieth century poets and winding countryside highways and every crumbling relic of a church for this book, one would think they could take the time to examine the appropriate way to handle revelations of childhood sexual assault by their characters.
but no, it's a poorly chosen plot vehicle that actually does nothing to advance the plot, this whole book is just so frustratingly White and Waspy and Fetishistic of the idea of a luxe, provencal lifestyle, the characters have nothing but disdain for the nouveauriche that they feel have invaded their little fairytale provencal village, and the region at large.
and the irritating irony is that the author has chosen for the characters to ignore the idea that we dislike in others that which we see in ourselves.
i had such high hopes for this series for some inexplicable reason there are multiple books, skip them all. I wanted to give this bookat the end because, once I got past the firstpages, which focused on a winery and a confusing legal system, I felt like I was relaxing into Provence, watching the locals, learning their way of life.
But I settled onI would really give it,because it was very slow as whodunnits go, Also there were so many characters that came and went, i would often have to flip back several pages to figure out why the police wanted to interview yet another suspect.
I also couldnt figure out the French Provençal police system, A judge being the detective And what is a commissaire I need to see if Longworth has a fan page where she explains it.
And I will because I do want to read the next one, Or maybe I should read the first one and that will explain it all,

Anyway, if you love, or are interested in, Provence, i recommend this book as a fun read, It certainly took me back there and made me long for another visit, As whodunnits go, well I think its only soso, The mysteries unfold very slowly, the investigations seem haphazard, But Longworths description of AixenProvence and its environs and culture oh the description of eating at astar Michelin restaurant which really exists make up for the lackluster whodunnit.


Definitely will be reading another one!,