- Street:
- Village Books
- Additional:
- 1200 Eleventh Street
- City:
- Bellingham ,
- Province:
- Washington
- Postal Code:
- 98225
- Country:
- United States
Renowned wine critic Richard Wilson makes a living elevating and destroying winemakers’ reputations with the stroke of his pen. When he disappears after a tasting at Napa Valley’s Norton Winery, his sister Janie looks to her ex-husband, Babe Stern, for help. But when Wilson’s body is found floating in a vat at Norton, Stern’s search turns into a hunt for the killer.
Working in the shadow of the Napa Valley police, Stern identifies a string of suspects, all with one thing in common: their desire to get retribution for the reviews that shattered their livelihoods. But as the police work to quickly clear the case, those same suspects provide alibis and the trail begins to fade.
Stern digs into the circumstances of Wilson’s death and finds himself following his only lead to Burgundy, France. In cellars and tasting rooms from Beaune to Nuits-Saint-Georges, Stern tracks the troubled son of a family of vignerons, one of the few people in the winery the night Wilson died. But the wine families of the Côte d’Or are secretive and entangled, and the deeper Stern goes, the more he himself becomes a target. In Dead in the Dregs, Stern’s only choice is to uncover the truth.
Peter Lewis is a successful restaurateur and restaurant industry consultant. He was a contributing editor for Virtuoso Travel & Life, for which he wrote the column “Wine Country Notebook.” His work has also appeared in Pacific Northwest and Arcade. Dead in the Dregs is his first novel. He lives in Seattle.
2012 Chuckanut Writers Conference
