Sat, Jan 11, 2014
Benjamin Lebel is hired by the son of a wealthy estate owner, Jean Guillame Ubayre's son, William, to conduct an assessment of his family's vineyards in Saint-Vivant (Bourgogne?). He takes Mathilde along on this tour, and together, they encounter a murder, a suicide attempt, a series of thefts and several blackmail schemes. As usual, the local police inspector is a clueless buffoon, intent on insulting Lebel and Mathilde -- but ultimately, he learns to cooperate and rescue the heroic Lebel.
Sat, Jan 25, 2014
Benjamin Lebel is invited by the prestigious Burgundy 'Tastevin' society host Roger Vincenot in the jury of their annual tasting. Major wine merchant Bernard Aristide, expected to be on business trip, arrives and rudely demands the seat of honor, only to die from the cup which does passes by Benjamin. Although unwelcome to the police, he insists to start his own investigation and orders a shaky Silvère to come assist him, a task he only takes to heart after meeting Vincenot's oenology-promising waitress Aurélie, who becomes the young gentleman's hot-tempered lover. Benjamin mistrust the offer of collaboration from the local newspaper editor, a historian. While he digs into the Aristide family and estates history, which prove a complex web of trickery, the same poison kills the neighboring Montclart brothers, brutes and parties to dirty tricks on both ends, but only darker family secrets explain another lurking crime.
Sat, Jan 18, 2014
Benjamin is contacted by the Strassburg police as possibly the last person to have talked, by phone, to murdered reporter Odile, who may have sent him her last article draft. She was working on the bitter, even crazy rivalry between old, dying traditional wine estate owner Vincent Kreutzler and Swiss investment banker Edgar Loewen, who buys many Alsation estates. Silvère hesitates to tell Lebel he successfully postulated at an Argentinian estate. Team lebel and the suspiciously friendly gendarmes (national police) disagree whether to dig deeper in family pasts, but the murderer strikes again, using inventive methods, and turns on Benjamin.
Top-rated
Sat, Jan 3, 2015
Swiss investment banker insists that Lebel must assess a Chateauneuf-du-Pâpe estate, once reputed, slipping since the later owner Castelnaut's daughters fired wine-maker Francis Ollier, who now runs a friend-partner's smaller estate. Benjamin rightly suspects the supposed reason given by the only rich heiress-sister, Kate Weller, who returns from abroad, is a front, and starts digging in the murky family and staff history even before vineyard sabotage and murder strike.
Top-rated
Sat, Jan 10, 2015
Benjamin Lebel is flattered that his youth-days poetry about the Cathar castles are to be published by a small firm in the Languedoc department Aude, so the drives there with assistant Silvère, who was promised a castles tout. They stay with Lebel's old friend, oenologist and former fellow 1960s revolutionary Janny Verniaud, who now leads a cooperative for biological wine-growing, but her young partners -especially hothead Arthur Gassard- are tired of her stickler obstacles to profitable production. The Montepelleir professor who piloted the Lebel poems projects, Janny's former colleague, has been killed in a car crash, which Benjamin finds suspicious even before his home is found ransacked, so he digs in the professor's other projects too.
Sat, Jan 17, 2015
Benjamin Lebel and his assistant Mathilde go to Cahors to evaluate the wine production of the estate of Mr. Edouard Perolles.When they begin the wine tasting, they have a bad surprise: the wine is very foul.In the wine tank No 13 they find a corpse.The man has been severely hit and put in the wine tank.Nodody knows his identity.The police captain Medraoui makes a lot of questions to Mr. Perolles (about the guests who have come to the estate or about the workers of the estate).On his side Benjamin Lebel begins his own investigation.