Death Among the Vines

The wine-growing district of the Hunter Valley scorches under a harsh summer when Col Ashcombe, world-renowned winemaker, is brutally murdered in his own vineyard. His son, Tim Ashcombe, an art director living in New York, returns home for the funeral, only to find himself trapped in a world he thought he'd escaped - a world still dominated by the overbearing ego of his murdered father.

The blood feud with neighbouring winery owners has escalated and a multinational company is pressuring Tim's family to sell their winery cheaply. Tim sets out to discover why his father changed his will just before his death, but is warned off by the family solicitor.  Anxious to secure his family's financial future and drawn to renew a romance with his childhood sweetheart, Tim searches for some way out of an increasingly intricate tangle of childhood histories, business duplicity and strange liaisons.

The police investigation team has its own problems, baffled by a crime which appears to have no motive.A puzzle of extraordinary complexity begins to unfold, uncovering a devious business conspiracy and unimagined family secrets - secrets of greed, child abuse, murder and revenge.