The Tree of Death, love potions, and rare wines are all elements in Nadia Gordon's second Napa Valley mystery, Death By the Glass, featuring small-restaurant owner and chef, Sunny McCoskey. It doesn't surprise too many people when one of the owners of the popular Vinifera restaurant dies of an apparent heart attack. Nathan Osborne was known to have lived passionately, as his closest friends say. But Sunny, who had not even met the dead man, was puzzled by the broken bottle of rare wine found near his body, and it's this curiosity that drives her to find out how Nathan Osborne really died.

What the reader will enjoy as Sunny dons her amateur sleuth cap is the snappy yet believable dialogue and insight into the wine industry. This was a page-turning mystery that I did not expect to enjoy as much as I did. (Yes, that is an endorsement!)

I did not read Gordon's first mystery, Sharpshooter, but I already have placed a hold on it and on her third Sunny McCoskey mystery, Murder Alfresco, and look forward to reading them and getting to know Sunny McCoskey better.