The Bitter Taste of Murder

The follow-up to Murder in Chianti finds ex-NYPD detective Nico Doyle recruited by Italian authorities to investigate the murder of a prominent wine critic. One year after moving to his late wife’s Tuscan hometown of Gravigna, Nico Doyle has fully settled into life there, seeing friends in the course of daily errands and helping to serve and test recipes at his in-laws’ restaurant. But the town is shaken by the arrival of wine critic Michele Mantelli in his flashy Jaguar. Mantelli holds his influential culinary magazine and blog over Gravigna’s vintners and restaurateurs (and, to Maresciallo Perillo’s dismay, the traffic laws). He has either impressed or ticked off most of ravigna’s residents—but most of all Nico’s landlord, Aldo Ferri, whose vineyard Mantelli seems intent on ruining. Mantelli’s lavish, larger-than-life, and often vindictive personality has made him many enemies, and when he is poisoned, Perillo has a headache of a high-profile murder on his hands—and once again turns to Nico for help.