Thursday, July 31, 2014

Vulture Au Vin

Vulture Au Vin (Murder Mystery)
By Lisa King
ISBN #978-1579623579
The Permanent Press www.thepermanentpress.com
Price  $29.00
320 Pages
Rating 3 Stars

“Superb Writing, And A Darn Good Mystery .”

Jean Applequist is on assignment from her magazine, Wine Digest, to cover a billionaire’s wine tasting event at Phoenix Garden. Since there has already been a murder in the area, her boyfriend insists she take their gay martial arts instructor as a bodyguard. He’s sure Jean will end up involved in investigating the murder while she’s there. The advice proves prophetic, as more murders occur, and evidence points to someone at Phoenix Gardens.

The author does write for a wine magazine in real life, and can name and describe the wines in detail. Her writing is superb, and the mystery is darn good. I was disappointed that the author quoted classic mystery novels, but never turned a good phrase herself. Having no interest in thousand dollar bottles of wine, and what billionaires eat bored me to tears. The fight between the gay martial arts bodyguard and an ex Army Special Forces soldier lasted all of two blows, at the most a paragraph. Naturally, the gay martial arts instructor beat the trained killer. The characters were vulgar. Most of the story talked about wine and food, and was taken up with sex, or thinking about sex. The gutter language spoken by intelligent characters, that should have been able to speak without such words in every day conversation, was a put-off. I received the book as a review copy from the publisher, as I certainly would not have bought it. I love a good mystery, and this would have been perfect, except for all the extra negatives that ruined it for me.

Tom Johnson

Detective Mystery Stories

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