Customer Reviews

The Vintage Caper (Thorndike Mystery)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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)

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

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.

If you have an interest in Marseilles, France and travel there in general, you may find this book interesting. As a work of fiction though, it has to be one of the worst books I have ever read.

As a "Who Done-It?" mystery, the story fails completely. While the pretext of the crime itself is at first intriguing and makes sense (a three million dollar wine collection is stolen from an L.A. wine collector), how and why his main character, Sam Levitt, ends up in France, and figures out who the main culprit is makes almost no sense at all. Once the culprit is revealed, it is all downhill from there. What follows for the remainder of the book is a complete lack of intrigue or action. The plot line becomes annoyingly predictable and is surprisingly devoid of any of the usual twists or turns traditional to the genre. Sorry for the spoiler, if you can call it that, but the story ends exactly how the main character predicts it will.

Mayle's characters are also pathetically cliche and one-dimensional. While this, again in the tradition of the "Who Done-It?" genre, can sometimes be forgiven if the story is at least intriguing, sadly it is not.

More annoying still is the pretentious and overly repeated message from Mayle: L.A. is phony and plastic while Marseilles is the Mecca of wine, romance and fine dining. Mayle goes into excruciating detail about every bite of food his one-dimensional characters take. It seems his real intention is to impress you with his knowledge of Marseilles and French cuisine while the story and plot are thrown in as an afterthought. Ironically though, while the book is supposedly about great French wines (whose legendary vintages are listed by Mayle ad nauseam), the subject matter itself is barely explored at all by the author. Most wine enthusiasts reading the book would probably be very disappointed.

Many years ago Peter Mayle was a good writer. "A Year in Provence," "Hotel Pastis" were well written and entertaining. This latest is a piece of garbage. Boring from the word go, with as shallow a plot as I've ever seen. He seems to have written this for no other reason than to impress us with his "knowledge" of restaurants and wines but that knowledge in both cases could easily be gained by googling. A complete was of time and a real disappointment.

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.

Not just Mr. Mayle's worst book, but one of the worst in the universe of literature. From the vapid, almost non-existent plot to the completely detached characters, this book offers nothing to the reader. Does "caper" imply a modicum of suspense? Literally none is found here. Mr. Mayle owes me a Cotes du Rhone for this one.

Peter Mayle really ought to be ashamed of this one. A very short story with a feeble, unconvincing and easily predictable plot and a genuinely silly ending, this has all the characteristics of a last minute job.

A very fun and easy read. A "who dunnit" that revolves around wine, California and France, and a very charming protagonist. The characters are interesting with a touch of exotic. If you like Peter Mayle's writing, then you'll love this. If you've never read him, then this is a great place to start.

While this book was interesting, I kept hoping there would be some plot twist - anything! But, instead, everything moved along as expected. The best part of the book were the descriptions of the wine and the food. Everything else was flat. The characters were interesting, but undeveloped. The plot was enticing, but too easy. This could have been a great book, it just never made it past expected.