The Vineyard Victims: A Wine Country Mystery

In Crosby’s full-bodied eighth Wine Country mystery (after 2016’s The Champagne Conspiracy), Virginia vintner Lucie Montgomery has to swerve on a rain-slick road to avoid a head-on collision with a speeding car driven by her neighbor Jamie Vaughn, an unsuccessful U.S. presidential candidate. When Jamie slams into a stone pillar at the entrance to her property, Lucie leaps from her vehicle and races to the wreckage. She’s in time only to hear his dying words: “Tell Rick I need him to forgive me.” Most people who knew Jamie figure it was an accident, but Lucie is sure that the crash was deliberate. When Jamie’s nearest and dearest begin acting suspiciously, Lucie becomes determined to find Rick and deliver Jamie’s message. The intrigue grows, as does the danger to herself, after Lucie learns that Rick was an old friend of Jamie’s who’s now on death row for the murder some 30 years earlier of a brilliant doctoral student at the University of Virginia. Crosby keeps the reader guessing until the exciting climax. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency. (Nov.)