Murder Napa Valley

Effervescent 50-ish photojournalist Margaret Barlow returns from her well-received first appearance in Murder on the Chesapeake to investigate untoward doings at a California winery. Arriving at the L'Abbaye de Ste. Denise to do a harvest story, Margaret finds herself in the middle of a family feud among the estate owners, brothers John and Bryant Selfridge and John's ex-wife Hester. Successive years of sabotage, including pesticide found in the vats and arson, have led the abbey to the brink of foreclosure. Then a migrant grape picker is deliberately run over; a family member is shredded in the stemmer-crusher machine; and the employee in charge of PR is drowned in a vat of cabernet. Margaret's detecting includes a clandestine investigation of the office files in search of wills, divorce papers and tax returns. But not even the help of the local newspaper editor, a cherubic octogenarian who becomes her cohort, nor the action of the extremely unpleasant homicide chief can save her from being trapped in the cloister cellars in the fast-paced finale to this intriguingly intricate entertainment. (May)