Maggie Newberry quits her job in advertising in Atlanta to move to Southern France with her Boyfriend Laurent when he inherits a vineyard from his Uncle. The plan is to spend a year there than decide what to do with the Vineyard and the House after the harvest. In 1946 there was a grisly murder of a family of four at the house. The villagers told them living there would bring bad luck .After they celebrated the opening of the new bottles of wine. Another murder occurs and Maggie gets involved trying to solve it. She thinks the two events might be connected. This is the third book in a series i haven't read the other two in fact this is the first book i have read by this author. The characters are interesting and the story was very well written. ( )

Maggie Newberry quit her advertising job and moved from Atlanta to southern France while her boyfriend, Laurent, tried to plan what to do after inheriting a vineyard from his uncle. The plan was to spend a year there, harvest the season’s grapes, and decide what to do with the land and the house. While a few of the villages were welcoming, some definitely were not.
Murder à la Carte opened with the grisly murder of a family of four at the house in 1946. Many villagers told them living there will bring bad luck. The story proceeded with descriptions of the harvesting and wine making processes. As they celebrated the opening of the new bottles, another murder occurred in the house. Maggie found herself in trying to solve it, thinking there might be a connection between the two events.
Susan Kiernan-Lewis has an eye for detail and offered a lot of descriptions of people and places. Her writing was fluent, occasionally providing some interesting observations: “Maggie fished out a croissant from the paper bag, depositing shingles of pastry all over the car.” “Its awning stretched out like green-vined tendrils, the fringe fluttering like so many languid, dirty fingers wagging a him.”
This book is the third of a series. I read it first and felt the short explanations were sufficient to fill in what was necessary except for a concentration camp reference.
There are several grammatical errors and an excess of French words, mostly untranslated, seemingly peppered around with no apparent rationale. The medical diagnosis at the end should have been discovered decades earlier.
I read the previous book when I finished this one.
This book was a free Amazon download. ( )

American woman and her French boyfriend move to Provence for a year after he inherits a farm house and vineyard. Shortly after arriving and making a few friends they learn that a family was murder on the doorstep of their home at the end of WWII. Strange things start happening to get them to abandom and sell but Laurant is determined to stay and Maggie decides to investigate and write a book about the murder. ( )

An easy enjoyable book, but not a keeper as it were...more of a holiday light read. ( )