The Vintage Caper

Customer Reviews

• amusing crime caper  Oct 28, 2009 (12 of 12 found this helpful)

  Hollywood entertainment lawyer Danny Roth cherishes his wine collection, insured for three million dollars. He is so full of pride over his vintage collection he boasts excessively about his vino darlings during a Los Angeles Times interview. However, Danny feels violated when someone who obviously read the article absconded with his wine collection.
  
  Insurance agent Elena Morales hires her former boyfriend Sam Levitt, a wine connoisseur, to investigate the theft. He follows the trail to France where he teams up with insurance agent Sophie Costes, a wine and food gourmand. They soon track the purloined wine to Marseilles with billionaire wine collector Francis Reboul as the prime suspect behind the theft.
  
  This is an amusing crime caper that will have readers toasting Peter Mayle with A Good Year French champagne. The story line is fast-paced and straightforward as the shortest distance between California and French Lessons is between Sam and the other players. With a solid cast, Vintage Caper is lighthearted fun as each key participant makes their play for the valuable vino with not one of them fully trusting any of the others.
  
  Harriet Klausner
  

• Light beach fiction  Oct 29, 2009 (11 of 11 found this helpful)

  Fun, well-constructed tale. Keeps moving. Written with Mayle's typical cleverness and skill with phrasing. But it's very *light* fiction. It's plot-driven vs character-driven. Reading "A Year in Provence" makes one think. Heck, Mayle himself -- as a reluctant "character" -- revealed the evolution of his own biases over the course of that book. That was excellent: the writer as unwilling participant, revealing more about himself to the reader than perhaps he intended as the writer.
  
  There's nothing like that here. It's a good story, with pleasant characters and a lot of fun. But it won't leave you contemplating anything more serious than why you haven't had a good bouillabaisse for a while.
  
  This is the kind of book that only authors with several best sellers to their credit get to publish. If a first-time author were to approach a publisher with this manuscript, it would never see the light of day. But Mayle is a brand. And I'm a fan of that brand. So I'm happy to have read it and enjoyed it very much. But I hope you'll find it useful to know that it's at the lighter end of the Mayle spectrum (like, say, Grisham's "Playing for Pizza").
  
  Enjoy! (Under the sun)(Tuscan or otherwise)

• Best Mayle Novel Yet  Oct 24, 2009 (14 of 15 found this helpful)

  I have collected all of Peter Mayle's books after becoming a "Year in Provence" fan. While enjoying his novels some are better than others. Took this one out at library and found it best one yet. Very entertaining and for those who are Peter Mayle fans can highly recommend it. Liked it so much that I went ahead and bought copies for Christmas presents and for my Mayle collection. Whether he is considering this as a one off for his character or developing the principal character for future books I found this one an enjoyable read.

• Minor Mayle Book  Nov 5, 2009 (4 of 4 found this helpful)

  I was looking for light entertainment but this book sunk like a heavy scone.
  Mayle apparently doesn't think women over 35+ can be attractive, lots of snooty asides about
  older woment that seemed jarring in a novel looking for charm.
  
  I think his writing has become 'corked'.
  I'd rate a pass on this silly novel.

• A Good Bordeaux  Nov 5, 2009 (2 of 2 found this helpful)

  I just finished Peter Mayle's new book The Vintage Caper. Over the years, I've read most of his books: A Year in Provence, Toujours Provence, Hotel Pastis, Chasing Cezanne, and I find that they're all pleasant travelogues diverting my daydreaming to the south of France. This one centers on the disappearance of an expensive wine collection and the search to get it back. Like an omelet at Madame Poulard's in Brittany, the novel is light, fluffy, and easy to digest. Although the protagonist is on the trail of great Bordeauxs, the read is a bit more like a pleasant rosé than one of its more robust red counterparts. Nonetheless, whether at the beach or cozied up in front of a fire with a fine glass of wine, it's a most pleasant diversion for a few hours particularly as the chill of winter approaches.