Janet Hubbard – författare

Max Maguire, a twenty-nine-year-old female detective with the New York Police Department, flies to France to attend the wedding of her friend, Chlo├®Marceau, at a grand estate east of Paris in the Champagne region. There Max meets an older man, the urbane Olivier Chaumont, and experiences a fairy-tale evening. But when Chlo├®''s widowed aunt, the beautiful and successful L├®a de Saint-Pern, is found murdered, Max and Olivier are snapped back into their professional roles. To Max''s chagrin, she is banned from an official investigative role, while Olivier, a magistrate, is put in charge of the investigation.

The value of vineyards and champagne companies is at an all-time high, and Olivier learns that there were several people attempting to gain control of L├®a''s business at the time of her death. Max, with her quintessential American girl-next-door looks that belie a gritty interior, takes a stealthier approach. Using the sleuthing skills that she inherited from her detective father, she insinuates herself into the victim''s family until their long-held secrets begin to surface like bubbles in a glass of champagne. After another family member is found dead on the day of Lea''s funeral, however, Max puts her career and her tentative relationship with Olivier in jeopardy as her determination to find the murderer—and prove herself in the process—takes over.

Between interrogations and pursuits and while sipping the finest beverage in the world and tasting food that leaves the listener salivating, the bicultural detectives discover that they are an unbeatable team when it comes to bringing criminals to justice.

Thirty-year-old Max Maguire, detective with the New York Police Department, finds herself in France again when she is sent as a bodyguard for one of America''s most famous wine critics, who is traveling to Bordeaux to taste some of the most expensive wines in the world. In the tragic circumstances that follow, Max is once again paired with French examining magistrate Olivier Chaumont, with whom she had had a fling the year before while solving a case in Champagne.

In the bicultural duo''s pursuit of a murderer on the loose, they run headlong into a counterfeiting operation. Their investigation sends them to marvelous chateaux in France as well as posh apartments, wine clubs, and auction houses in the United States as they desperately try to prevent more violence.

Max and Olivier sip fine wines and dine in fabulous restaurants as they interrogate French and American suspects, most of whom are wealthy and influential. As they investigate, it is still unclear whether Max will at last unite with her French family or whether she and Olivier will again heat up the night. And considering their cultural and personality differences, will they be able to solve the crime without wanting to kill each other?

Hubbard has created another spine-tingling murder mystery that also offers adventure, travel, romance, and gastronomic delights.