The Angels’ Share

De: Ellen Crosby

Narrado por: Christine Marshall

Ellen Crosby pours up another corking mystery with The Angels’ Share, an intriguing blend of secret societies, Prohibition bootleg wine, and potentially scandalous documents hidden by the Founding Fathers, all of which yield a vintage murder.

When Lucie Montgomery attends a Thanksgiving weekend party for friends and neighbors at Hawthorne Castle, an honest-to-goodness castle owned by the Avery family, the last great newspaper dynasty in America and owner of the Washington Tribune, she doesn’t expect the festive occasion to end in death.

During the party, Prescott Avery, the 95-year-old family patriarch, invites Lucie to his fabulous wine cellar where he offers to pay any price for a cache of 200-year-old Madeira that her great-great-uncle, a Prohibition bootlegger, discovered hidden in the US Capitol in the 1920s. Lucie knows nothing about the valuable wine, believing her late father, a notorious gambler and spendthrift, probably sold or drank it. By the end of the party Lucie and her fiancé, winemaker Quinn Santori, discover Prescott’s body lying in his wine cellar. Is one of the guests a murderer?

As Lucie searches for the lost Madeira, which she believes links Prescott’s death to a cryptic letter her father owned, she learns about Prescott’s affiliation with the Freemasons. More investigating hints at a mysterious vault supposedly containing documents hidden by the Founding Fathers and a possible tie to William Shakespeare. If Lucie finds the long-lost documents, the explosive revelations could change history. But will she uncover a 300-year-old secret before a determined killer finds her?

©2019 Ellen Crosby (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing

Who killed Preston

An adventure in old and New Virginia. This story had the readers visiting historical sites through the eyes of rich and powerful some even evil residents of VA. A Murder of a delightful old man, the patriarch of the family. The readers is on a search to find out who did it. All because his family didn't like how he decided to spend his money and drink his booze and wine.

Delightful bits of history and mystery

This is the 3rd book in the series I have listened to and my favorite so far. Though I would tell the main character to get a prenup, grouchy fiancé, lol. A nice thing was this was in Audible Plus. I won't hesitate to pre-order the authors next book.

excellent research on wine making but...

I really like the vast research into the growing of the grapes,and the many other aspects of wine and it's also interesting, and I find myself learning a little more about this art and its history with each book.

The same cannot be said, however, about the research regarding an important but less central aspect of the story, guns and weapons. For example, near the end of this book, the author writes that Luci " engages the safety" on a Glock pistol. The problem is that, unlike many other handguns, Glock pistols to not have a manual safety that can be engaged by the user but rather an automatic safety system. In another book in the series, she refers to a rifel as an "automatic" which is a gun that fires multiple bullets with a single trigger pull, but automatic weapons are illegal for civilians to possess or own (except in extremely rare cases). I believe what she is actually is talking about is a semi-automatic rifle, which fires only one bullet each time the trigger is pulled.

Mistakes like these are what help cause misunderstanding within the general public, like confusing automatic and semi-automatic guns or the belief that the terms are interchangeable. We already see this when the news media routinely mistakenly misuses those terms or even makes up terms like "assault weapons" which isn't even a term that has any definition within the industry. Accurate information is easily available for definitions as well as gun specifications via Internet searchs of the abundance of authoritative web sites. Perhaps this seems picky, but it is important to be factual and accurate.

Regardless, I am enjoying this series very much and hope to read more by this author in the future. I also enjoy the narrator's talent for definition between characters. One thing I'd like to hear is more consistency in her southern accent, (which has a beautiful "Southern Belle flavor) since I noticed that it comes and goes throughout the reading of this book, and between volumes in the series. Still, she is a delight to listen to.

one of the best mysteries, I have ever listened to

I love the whole series, very interesting, mysteries, plus historical Vingina and DC. The characters are deep and real! I hope ,I can find more books like this one...

History & Wine Create a Corking Mystery

Ellen Crosby weaves a wonderful story in The Angels' Share. It's enlivened by interesting characters. I had to get used to the narration & speeding it up a notch helped. I recommend the Wine Country series for a good read!

different

I liked how it talked about the Constitution and where it might have been read and who might have done it.
Nice to hear something different about a different time.

Narrator so breathy

She makes the main character sound like the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. The fiance sounds like a grouchy, snappy man most of the time and the story, while the history is great, is just so uncomfortable. All of wealth is hard to bear.

Really interesting story

So, this was a pretty good story and I liked it enough to not regret purchasing it, but it does have some issues.

Now, I'm from the South, so I know what people from Virginia sound like. I don't think the narrator of this book has ever met an actual Southerner. The whole Foghorn Leghorn accent is very insulting, honestly, and it took me right out of the story at a few points.

The writer also seemed to sort of hammer on the fact that the characters are very, very wealthy and well educated. Even the characters who were delivered as "low class" are just coincidentally experts on things that have nothing to do with their professions or hobbies.

Overall, the story takes some turns where you think things won't be resolved before bringing you back full circle. I'm not recommending this book to anyone who understands Southerners.