Love, blackmail, murder, and intrigue are blended like a complex full-bodied wine in the latest installment of Ellen Crosby’s Virginia vineyard mystery series, The Champagne Conspiracy.
Welcome back to the Montgomery Estate Vineyard, where Lucie Montgomery and winemaker Quinn Santori have decided to bottle a sparkling champagne-like wine a week before Valentine’s Day. But on the eve of a major snowstorm, Quinn’s cousin Gino, patriarch of one of Napa’s wine family dynasties, turns up demanding help in solving a long-ago family mystery that has its origins in Prohibition-era Washington, D.C., where bootlegging and blackmail, jazz and murder, went hand in hand. Before long Lucie realizes someone will go to any lengths to keep a century-old secret involving a scandalous presidential affair buried in the past. Can she learn the identity of the ruthless modern-day blackmailer determined to stop her before it’s too late?