Angels' Share is the 10th installment of this wine country cozy mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Lucie Montgomery. Lucie has a mobility impairment and owns a vineyard in Loudoun County, Virginia.

When Lucie Montgomery attends a Thanksgiving weekend party for friends and neighbors at Hawthorne Castle owned by the Avery family, the last great newspaper dynasty in America, she doesn't expect the festive occasion to end in death. During the party, Prescott Avery, the 95 year old family patriarch, invites Lucie to his fabulous wine cellar, where he offers to pay any price for a cache of 200 year old Madiera that her great-uncle, a Prohibition bootlegger, discovered hidden in the U. S. Capitol in the 1920s. Lucie knows nothing about the wine and believed that her late father, a gambler and spendthrift, probably sold or drank it. By the end of the party, Lucie and her fiancé, winemaker Quinn Santori, discover Prescott's body lying in his wine cellar. As Lucie searches for the lost Madiera, she learns about Prescott's affiliation with the Freemasons. More investigation hints at a mysterious vault containing documents hidden by the Founding Fathers and a possible tie to William Shakespeare.

Angels' Share is the best written book in this series. Author Ellen Crosby has become a fantastic writer over the years since she began writing this series. All of the books are good. However, the writing is awkward in some sections of the earlier books. Crosby has finally hit her stride with this new novel.

I was somewhat surprised that most of the pursuit of mystery concerned the secondary plot around lot treasure. The solving of the crime, Prescott Avery's murder, took second place. The lost treasure hunt was exciting though and kept me reading but I wondered why, or rather how, it fit in with the murder. The choice for the title was interesting. The angel's share is the amount of wine that evaporates from a wine barrel between the time it is bottled and the time it is opened.I learned quite a bit about Madiera wine from the book. As with all of the books in the series, a particular wine is featured and the reader becomes knowledgable about that wine. ( )

Since Thomas Jefferson and our founding fathers feature heavily in this story, it is a perfect time to read this book during the impeachment hearings on TV. There’s lot of talk about The War of 1812 and the burning of the White House (then called The President’s House) and securing the safety of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution which were hidden in Virginia. I do love this series but this particular book was a little overly long in the tourism aspect.

Story starts with Luci and Quinn being invited to an after Thanksgiving party at the neighboring estate of a 95 year old neighbor. He invites Luci to his private wine cellar and shows her a copy of the Declaration of Independence copied in Jefferson’s own handwriting. He wants her to supply very old Madeira that her father had, and supposedly was to be served at a party for James Madison at the White House He would pay any price for this wine but Luci isn’t aware of where it could be.

Shortly after Luci and Quinn leave, the body of Prescott is found dead in his wine cellar. It’s murder and Luci is the last person before the murder to have spoken with him. ( )

Crosby excels at the sub-genre I call Buttinsky Procedural, in which a protagonist who is not connected to law enforcement can't resist trying to solve a murder to which she is somehow connected. In this one, winemaker Lucie Montgomery is invited into the fabulous wine cellar of local zillionaire Prescott Avery; he wishes to show her a secret and also to get her to sell him some bottles of Madeira that were intended for James Madison. Avery soon shows up dead, and Lucie feels compelled to try to figure out his secret, in spite of being told that "Sometimes it's just best to leave things lay where Jesus flang em." As generally happens, in pursuing the secret, Lucie ends up solving the murder.

As always, Crosby enriches her story with details of historical and literary interest. In this one we learn about a possible real-life inspiration for The Tempest, as well as the history of Jamestown, Williamsburg, and colonial Virginia in general. I love how Lucie is so well connected that she can get access to just the right expert in any field. Crosby ties all the threads together nicely into a very enjoyable read. ( )

Lucie Montgomery and her fiancé Quinn Santori attend the annual Avery after Thanksgiving weekend party where Lucie is invited down to the wine cellar by the Prescott Avery, the family patriarch. Prescott wants to persuade Lucie to sell him some very old Madeira but Lucie doesn't know anything about. She believes that her father, a gambler, probably already sold it. Prescott is disappointed so Lucie returns to the party only to realize that she must have dropped her phone in the wine cellar. She and Quinn return only to find Prescott dead. Police believe that Prescott fell and hit his head but Lucie thinks otherwise considering that Prescott's cane was not with him.

What Prescott told her about the wine that he was searching for, if it still existed, the bottles would be extremely valuable. Prescott also told her that her father had 2 safety deposit boxes and wondered if the details of the Madeira would be there.

Lucie starts her search for the Madeira and comes across many historical references to Prohibition as well as the War of 1812 which take her to Williamsburg, and other areas of Virginia linked to the Founding Fathers.

Loved this story and the historical ties that were incorporated throughout. Great mystery as well. ( )