WINEMAKER DETECTIVE MYSTERIES PAGE: TREACHERY IN BORDEAUX, #1; #4 through #6

TREACHERY IN BORDEAUX (Winemaker Detective Mysteries #1)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Anne Trager)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: THE PERFECT BLEND OF MYSTERY & GASTRONOMY

Treachery in Bordeaux is the first book in the beloved Winemaker Detective novels, the "addictive" French series featuring master winemaker Benjamin Cooker and his sidekick Virgile. When some barrels turn at the prestigious grand cru Moniales Haut-Brion wine estate, Cooker and Virgile start to investigate. Is it negligence or sabotage? They search the city and wine region for answers, welcoming readers into the underworld of a global luxury industry. Grab a glass of your favorite Bordeaux and delve into a world of money, deceit, inheritance, greed, and fine wine.

Brimming with description, intrigue, and compelling characters, Treachery in Bordeaux kicks off this unbeatable series, which was adapted to television in France.

"I love good mysteries. I love good wine. So imagine my joy at finding a great mystery about wine, and winemaking, and the whole culture of that fascinating world. This is a terrific new series." — William Martin, New York Times bestselling author of Back Bay and The Lincoln Letter

"A fine vintage forged by the pens of two very different varietals. It is best consumed slightly chilled, and never alone. You will be intrigued by its mystery, and surprised by its finish, and it will stay with you for a very long time." —Peter May, international bestselling author

“Intrigue and plenty of good eating and drinking within just a few pages.”—Booklist

“Those who like detective stories that rely on the fine qualities of the investigator will find Cooker an enjoyable lead.”—Publishers Weekly

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I read these ages ago; I blew through them in a week, all eight that I possess. They're all short, punchy reads, really an afternoon's enjoyable reading and pondering.

More than anything else, the scratch the same itch as Martin Walker's Bruno series does, the desire to be taken into a place that feels charmingly unfamiliar yet guided around that place by a friendly, experienced polymath who makes us feel less...foreign...than a less cultured native's PoV would. In this story he is training a new assistant, Virgile, in the course of investigating a murder among the élite of historic winemaking center Bordeaux. That makes the emotional investment in the action so much easier; and it provides a reason for some basic questions we'd like answered to be asked.

The book offers us this explanation of the writing duo responsible for the series:

Jean-Pierre Alaux is a magazine, radio and television journalist when he is not writing novels in southwestern France. He is a genuine wine and food lover, and won the Antonin Carême prize for his cookbook La Truffe sur le Soufflé, which he wrote with the chef Alexis Pélissou. He is the grandson of a winemaker and exhibits a real passion for wine and winemaking. Coauthor of the series Noël Balen lives in Paris, where he shares his time between writing, making records, and lecturing on music. He plays bass, is a music critic and has authored a number of books about musicians in addition to his novel and short-story writing.

As is obvious from this potted biography, the duo clearly understand wine, luxury goods, and storytelling; the series was adapted to TV and was available in the US via the MHz Channel. I do not know if they are still available there; I'm disgruntled enough that the books are only available on Amazon.

Anyone wanting to escape the challenging emotional landscape of 2025 would do well to follow Benjamin and Virgile as they navigate the high-stakes world of French cultural treasures like wine, paintings, and that indefinable thing called "milieu." As cozy and escapist as a satisfying (if brief) vacation into the world of those who exist as natives in a beautiful lifestyle in a beautiful setting can be.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DEADLY TASTING (Winemaker Detective Mysteries #4)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Sally Pane)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: When wine tasting turns to murder.

A serial killer is on the loose in Bordeaux. A local chief detective calls wine expert Benjamin Cooker to the crime scene of a brutal murder. The killer has left a strange calling card: twelve wine glasses lined up in a semi-circle with the first one filled with wine.

Cooker is charged with the task of identifying the fabulous grand cru and is astonished by what he learns. A second victim is found, with two glasses filled. Is the killer intentionally leaving clues about his victims and his motives? Memories are jogged about the complicated history of Bordeaux during Nazi occupation. It was a dark time: weinfuhrers ruled the wine trade, while collaborationists and paramilitary organizations spread terror throughout the region.

In present-day wine country, time is running out. Will Cooker and his young assistant Virgile solve the mystery before all twelve glasses are full?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I missed the second and third installments when Le French Book was offering them on EW+, but in a series, that's less fatal than starting your read of it with a later book. I'd read, and really enjoyed, volume one, so I felt I could hop back into Benjamin and Virgile's milieu. Luckily I was correct.

A major subplot in this very short afternoon's amusement is Cooker the wine expert being required by his lady wife, Elisabeth, to give up wine...horror number one...and go on a cabbage diet. Bad enough already, horror number two is it's a liquidized cabbage diet.

The lady's established as a fabulous cook; his life is spent in the wine world of France; and he does not either divorce her or cheat on his diet. For seven days. True love indeed.

The murder that ignites the book is engendered in France's ugly, collaborationist past. The winemakers were, as most others were as well, getting on with their lives as the occupation wore on. Those who stood up to the vile occupiers have never stopped holding grudges. Debts are going to be called in as the time to do so grows ever shorter.

The staginess of the way the murder scenes are set-dressed makes it very clear they're not meant to be under-the-radar killings; no other reason for them to be so very obviously, unmissably, linked up. It does not lead to the immediate solution to the crimes. That was a very interesting touch to me. The collaborationists faded into the background where they could, where they were allowed to; but memories are long for betrayers of those who chose resistance.

I was more intrigued by the history than I was by the actual murders because the motive for them are so little explored; at least in Anglophone translations that make it here to the US. I'm really interested in how memory works on a cultural level. It is becoming a very great deal more relevant here in 2025 all over the world. I'm glad we have a few cultural objects around us to point out the signs of incipient rot.

I'm seeing a prose trend that could, if overused in future entries, cause me acute discomfort: there are a lot of lists (eg: "Elisabeth had cut a large head of cabbage, four slivers of garlic, six large onions, a dozen peeled tomatoes, six carrots, two green peppers, and one stalk of celery and plunged them into three quarts of water with three cubes of fat-free chicken broth. The mixture, seasoned with salt, pepper, curry powder, and parsley, had been boiled for ten minutes and then simmered until all the vegetables were tender.") in this story. A. Lot. It's not *quite* OTT yet, but could easily go there. The characters, major and minor, get reintroduced rather more elaborately than I myownself find helpful or necessary.

As of now these are grunts of annoyance. Watch this space....

ETA: I just learned that the stories in this series are novelizations of the TV show's scripts! Much is now clearer as to the way the writing sometimes does not flow in the reader's experience; try seeing them from a visual PoV and complaints are minimal. I'm so glad to find this out!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

COGNAC CONSPIRACIES (The Winemaker Detective Mysteries #5)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen; Luc Brahe & Éric Corbeyran (tr. Sally Pane)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The heirs to one of the oldest Cognac estates in France face a hostile takeover by foreign investors. Renowned wine expert Benjamin Cooker is called in to audit the books.

In what he thought was a sleepy provincial town, he is stonewalled, crosses paths with his first love, and stands up to high-level state officials keen on controlling the buyout. Meanwhile, irresistible Virgile mingles with the local population until a drowning changes the stakes.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Oh the horror! the horror! Benjamin's latest edition of his guide to wines is required to go in depth about...can he even think it!...American "wines"!

Snob.

Well, it *is* a very French series and they *are* very protective of their cultural heritage....

Virgile makes more of a splash in this entry into the series. It's odd, too, because while Benjamin drives the revelations, it's Virgile we see most of (and some of the folks of Cognac seem to want to see a lot more still). The series has multiple women as characters though it largely underuses them (slightly disappointingly it's more in the service of men than the plot, if you see what I mean, this time out). Virgile is, I hope, going to come to the fore a bit more.

Cognac, many US readers might learn for the first time, is a real place. It is so charmingly evoked in this short read that it feels more like the main character than any mere human. Benjamin is, as I guess should not shock a savvy reader, a man of Appetites and refined tastes...he reconnects with a long-ago love in this story who really seems to get him very exciteable. So to speak. It's why Virgile takes more attention, I suppose, since otherwise Elisabeth (Mme Cooker) might have problems.

I'm still barely on the good side of the list-use bubble, though sorely tried by: "He took in the scents of pear, apple, kirsch, cherry, strawberry, cranberry, fig, apricot, plum, quince, muscat, lemon, orange, grapefruit, citron, and Mirabelle plums. He wafted fragrances of violent, mint, verbena, fern, moss, anise, fennel, linden, gentian, angelica, tobacco, lavender, and mushroom, along with some spicy aromas, including cinnamon, pepper, clove, ginger, nutmeg, licorice, and saffron."

Family ties, no matter how...um...close they may be are not proof against greed and a desire to punish those you love for not being perfect. As a reason for murder, that's as old as Cain and Abel, as intense as Chinatown, and as uncomfortable as possible. Very much not my favorite read in the series.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

MAYHEM IN MARGAUX (The Winemaker Detective Series #6)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Sally Pane)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A made-for-TV series. Gourmet sleuthing in French wine country.

Fine wines, dirty secrets. It’s summer in Bordeaux.

There’s a heat wave, the vineyards are suffering, vintners are on edge, and wine expert Benjamin Cooker’s daughter is visiting. A tragic car accident draws the Winemaker Detective and his assistant Virgile into a case where the stakes are very personal, and they uncover the dirty secrets hiding behind some of Bordeaux’s finest grand cru classé wines from Margaux.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Oh myyyy, as Takei would say, is Papa Benjamin going to go all protective dad because wounded daughter Margaux is Interested in his charming assistant Virgile?

He wouldn't be the first daddy to lose his child to his assistant's charms in all of fiction. It happened to Gamache in the Three Pines books, after all. Is Papa Benjamin only worried because his daughter, visiting from her job in New York City, is wounded in the latest affront to the wonderful world of wines and the celebration of French culture that he must solve? Or is he feeling the writing on the wall as Margaux (named after the wine, of course) shows her increasing adulthood? Either way, the car she was riding in was clearly sabotaged, and the smarmy git driving her around in it is dead.

It's business as usual in the lovely liminal world of Bordeaux's cultured elite. Virgile and Margaux aren't the first two slightly-too-close pair to get Interested in each other. They both love, in their different ways, Benjamin. They share cultural antecedents in the world of wine. Now what are they going to do with these feelings? The threat posed by whoever caused Margaux's accident can't be dismissed out of hand, despite being convenient.

The drought in this story is palpable, the wine consumption way down as a result, and some of the usual scrumptious food descriptions are instead evocations of seasonally appropriate salads that just don't have the same level of mental delight for me as a reader. I did get why the choice was made, and in the decade-plus since I read the story we've seen tragic and unprecedented fires due to drought and extreme heat in this region it's probably all anyone there actually eats anymore.

Then hot-button issues like metal screwcaps replacing traditional corks fix the story in time.It's a debate that will never really cease, but the sheer efficacy and efficiency of screwcaps have become more and more obvious, so that dated the story just a bit.

I'm rootin' for Virgile to get his wooing of Margaux off the ground. I'd like to see more of her.