DEADLY OFFER

A favor for a friend involves realtor Darby Farr in yet another murder case.

Darby’s returned to her real-estate agency in Southern California after helping to solve a murder in Florida (Killer Listing, 2011, etc.). When her assistant ET Gomez learns his sister Selena is dead, he asks Darby to drive him up to Selena’s winery, Carson Creek Estate, where he’ll meet with his brother Carlos. Selena, who wasn’t well and was thinking of selling her beloved winery, was found dead in her hot tub. It looks like a heart attack, but when Darby, who has an amazing sense of taste, detects something off in the wine Selena was drinking, her new evidence says murder. Asked by Selena’s brothers to handle the sale, Darby stays on, only to learn that each of the prospective buyers insists that Selena had decided to sell to him or her. Selena’s winemaker Dan Stewart soldiers on, the crop is almost ready to harvest, but suddenly there are numerous acts of sabotage intended to ruin the crop. Certainly the people who want to buy are all suspects: the driven sister of a wealthy pop artist; Selena’s former abusive lover who claims he wanted to make amends; and the Contento family next door, owners of one of California’s largest wineries. Although Darby is dealing with a friend’s sudden disappearance in Hawaii and the return of her love interest reporter Miles Porter from Afghanistan, she refuses to leave crime solving to the police.

Darby’s third enlarges on her love life and real-estate skills while providing a complex mystery.