By Jean-Pierre Alaux, Noël Balen
When Guillaume Périthiard arrives in the Beaujolais region to buy the Vol-au-Vent estate, his installation is not to everyone's liking. Too rich, too ambitious, too flashy, he doesn't blend well into a landscape of tradition where the wine world is often a closely guarded domain. In the sly rivalry with the powerful Dujaray house, all tactics are allowed. Between low blows, dirty tricks, and gunshots, Périthiard relies on the oenologist Benjamin Cooker to give him a serious helping hand.
As the entire region prepares to celebrate the new wine for the third Thursday of November and merchants are gearing up to flood the planet, time seems to be running out. Cooker and his assistant Virgile embark on a race against time that takes them through sweet aromas and artificial rumors, enigmatic corpses and unsolvable passions. There's no point in dying, you have to arrive on time.
Publisher: Fayard (2005) - Fiction, Mystery, 13.5x21.5 cm, 196 pages, paperback, ISBN: 2213621012