| Silenced By Syrah: A Wine Lover's Mystery | 
 enlarge | Author: Michele Scott
Publisher: Berkley
Category: Book
List Price: $6.99
Buy New: $1.75
You Save: $5.24 (75%)
New (34) Used (26) from $1.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 53231
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 6.4 x 4.2 x 1
ISBN: 0425214524
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780425214527
ASIN: 0425214524
Publication Date: March 6, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Customer Reviews:
Wine and Murder at the Spa September 5, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The new restaurant, Georges on the Vineyard, is about to open in the new boutique hotel and spa at Malveaux Estates. It features star chef Georges Debussey. He is well-known for his cuisine as well as his lack of couth.
Georges goes for a Syrah bath splash at the spa to relax before the restaurant grand opening. When he doesn't return, Simon and Marco get Nikki to find out what's wrong. She finds him dead from a gunshot.
Detective Robinson rubs Nikki the wrong way when he tells her to not play Nancy Drew. She sets out to investigate on the sly.
During all this, Andres asks her to go to Spain with him. Nikki is upset most with the way he asks. And she isn't sure what she should do. And then there's Derek.
Nikki finds herself in danger along the way. Can she figure out who the killer is before someone else dies?
I really like this series. Nikki is such a fun character. The sexual tension created between Nikki, Andres, and Derek really adds to the storyline, but I do hope she makes a decision soon. When I first met Simon and Marco, I found them to be obnoxious, but now I really enjoy them. They add to the story and help Nikki along the way.
The Napa Valley setting really adds to the story as well. It seems so serene in the midst of the murder investigation. I would love to spend a week at the new hotel at Malveaux Estates.
Whether you like wine or not, give this series a try. I recommend reading them in order, but you don't have to. I highly recommend this book and the complete series.
Outstanding ! August 31, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The best so far ! As I read each one , the mystery is weaved and weaved thru the pages and I am enthraled !! Cannot wait for the next one -get busy writing Michele !!Love the themes !!
Couldn't stop reading this book! July 3, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is the third book in a series. I can't wait until Michele Scott writes a new one. All the same characters are in this book as were in the first two. The ending surprised me! Enjoy this book and her other two.
It doesn't get much better... June 25, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a self described foodie and book lover this series is my favorite of all cozy mysteries out there right now. I even got my 19 year old sister who is home from college to read them and she is now a fan as well. With each book Nikki's character just gets better and better and I can't wait to see where life takes her next. If you haven't read any of these books you absolutely must, just make sure you do it on a full stomach...the recipes are pretty awesome too!
 An enjoyable mystery, but ultimately put-downable June 20, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I've read every book in Michele Scott's "wine lover" series, and I really enjoy the premise. Nikki Sands is a failed actress (she had a short-lived TV series as a detective) who ends up as manager of a Napa valley winery. Whereupon she just happens to stumble on bodies, and for whatever reason feels it's necesary to find out The Truth herself. So far, so good.
This entry, however, is... okay. Only okay. The mystery itself is fine, in regard to the whodunnit and the author's ability to share clues without spotlighting them. (Sometimes it's contrived, but that's okay for this sort of book.) Scott continues to intersperse recipes between chapters, and that really *does* work, in a very charming way; so does her lighthanded education on wine and food pairing.
Where Silenced By Syrah stumbles is in the plot. In the earlier books, Nikki had perfectly good reasons to be an amateur sleuth. This time, her reasons weren't all that strong, and as I commented to a friend, "She really *is* being a nosy parker!" And while I recognize that other people enjoy the "which man shall I choose" romantic ambiguity, as Nikki has to deal with two compelling beaus... well, I grew tired of it. (Look, girl, make a decision already!) More to the point, it was a distraction from the mystery, and it got in the way of storytelling.
Plus, this book is a little less polished than the others. At one point Nikki leaves the dog at the roadside while she runs after a bad guy, and the poor dog disappears for about 100 pages. I kept worrying that Ollie was _still_ sitting next to the road, until thankfully he appeared in the last chapter or two. Whew, the critter got back home okay. Yes, that's a trivial issue but (a) of such trivia are mystery book clues created (b) Scott made the relationship between Nikki and Ollie far more real than she did for some "main" characters who are barely charcoal sketches and (c) it shows that the book needed one more pass by an editor.
Oh darn, that sounds way too serious. This is a fun book. It's not *quite* as fun as the others, but they were outstanding and this is "only" good. I took Silenced by Syrah with me on a cross-country plane trip, and at no time did I feel that reading the airline magazine would be a better use of my time. If you liked earlier books in the series, you'll like this fine, though you might grab another one off the Summer Reading Pile first. If you haven't read earlier books... well, this is okay, but you really should start with the earlier books just to gain from the character development.
|
|
|
