Bordeaux: The Bitter Finish

Janet Hubbard is author of Champagne: The Farewell, the first book in her Vengeance in the Vineyards series. She has also written more than twenty nonfiction books for teens. She divides her time between Vermont, Virginia, and France. janethubbard.com

Thirty-year-old Max Maguire, detective with the NYPD, finds herself in France again as she is sent as a bodyguard to one of America's most famous wine critics, who is traveling to Bordeaux, France to taste some of the most expensive wines in the world. In the tragic circumstances that follow, Max is paired once again with French examining magistrate, Olivier Chaumont, with whom she had had a fling the year before while solving a case in Champagne. In the bi-cultural duo's pursuit of a murderer on the loose, they run headlong into a counterfeit operation that has them entering the fabulous chateaux on one side of the Atlantic, and extraordinary New York apartments, wine clubs, and auction houses on the other side as they desperately try to prevent more violence.Max and Olivier, as in Hubbard's first novel in her "Vengeance in the Vineyard" series, CHAMPAGNE: The Farewell, sip fine wines and dine in fabulous restaurants as they interrogate both French and Americans, the majority of whom comprise the one percent. Readers will want to know: Will Max unite at last with her French family? Will she and Olivier heat up the night again? Will they, considering their cultural and personality differences, be able to solve the crime without wanting to kill each other?Hubbard has done it again: created a spine-tingling mystery that offers adventure, travel, romance, gastronomic delights--and, oh yes, a murder or two. A perfect summer read!