Champagne

the long version

Max Maguire, a twenty-nine-year-old female detective with the New York Police Department, flies to France to attend the wedding of her friend, Chloe Marceau, at a grand estate east of Paris in the Champagne region. There Max meets an older man, the urbane Olivier Chaumont, and experiences a fairy-tale evening. But when Chloe's widowed aunt, the beautiful and successful Lea de Saint-Pern, is found murdered, Max and Olivier are snapped back into their professional roles. To Max's chagrin, she is banned from an official investigative role, while Olivier, a magistrate, is put in charge of the investigation. She insinuates herself into the victim's family until their long-held secrets begin to surface like bubbles in a glass of champagne. After another family member is found dead on the day of Lea's funeral however, Max puts her career and her tentative relationship with Olivier in jeopardy as her determination to find the murderer--and prove herself in the process--takes over.