Wining and Dying - A Review

 

Wining and Dying

by

Daryl Wood Gerber

A Review

Within the waves, in India ink,

he had written a quote by Mahatma Gandhi:

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean.
If a few drops of the ocean are dirty, 

the ocean does not become dirty.”

The author has created a weak cozy mystery that spent too much time describing the clothing worn by the various characters rather than developing the mystery behind Quade’s (a character with a single name) murder.

Set in the seaside community of Crystal Cove on the Northern California coast. The small town is famous for its lying in the midst California’s wine making country and for being an artists’ colony in its own right. It was the week of the 5th annual Art and Wine Festival and at the end of day one Quades’s body had been found in his hotel room. It seemed that everybody was a suspect - both because the guilty party was not known and because everybody seemed to have a motive. Jenna Hart was the amatuer sleuth; Cinnamon Pritchett was the Chief of Police. The question became could they work together to eliminate the innocent and stumble onto the guilty. Cinnamon did not think so, but it seemed that unplanned circumstances would force them to do so.

Beginning with chapter one, we are inundated with clothing descriptions - and it does not stop. Rarely when a new character comes on stage, the author has to take a sentence or two to describe their color and styles being worn by the newly arriving character. These descriptions may have lengthened the book, but they did not improve the plot for this reader. I did appreciate the way the author wove the names of actual artists into the story (e.g. Veraluz, Diego Rivera, and Roland David Smith) along with fictional ones. I found myself, more than once, seeking more about these real artists via Google as I read. I give the book four stars.
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This review is based on a free electronic copy provided by the publisher for the purpose of creating this review. The opinions expressed are mine alone.