Mystery novel heroine is a sommelier, like author Nadine Nettmann

To anyone who's uncorked a bottle to reach the mystery within, it's not such a stretch to imagine that the sensory skills that go into evaluating a fine wine might be brought to bear on unraveling a crime.

'I thought it would be fun having a character solve mysteries using her deductive wine skills,' said Nadine Nettmann, whose Katie Stillwell is the heroine of 'Decanting a Murder' (2016) and 'Uncorking a Lie' (2017), the first two installments of her 'Sommelier Mystery' series.

Nettmann will be in Sonoma on Saturday, June 3, sharing the Readers' Books stage with another mystery writer, Marla Cooper, whose own latest is a 'destination wedding mystery' set in Napa. Clearly, the genre has expanded beyond the mean streets of Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles.

Nettmann's 'Uncorking a Lie' takes place almost entirely within the Sonoma Valley. While many of the locations are purely fictional – the Monument Hotel does not exist, at least not yet – there are familiar landscapes of sunlit vineyards and gated estates, and a gratuitous lunch at the Fremont Diner – of chicken and waffles, of course.

It's not just the wine regions that infiltrate these mysteries, however, but wine itself – for Nettmann is, like her heroine, a Certified Sommelier. 'In 2010 I was at a wine and food festival in Hawaii, and was called upon by Master Sommelier Fred Dame to 'taste the first glass and tell us what you think.'' Though already a wine-lover, she decided at that point she'd better learn as much as she could about wine, and that passion came to infuse her still-developing writing career.

'I've always wanted to be a writer, ever since I could hold a pencil,' she said. After college, 'It took 10 years, five books, and 421 queries for me to secure an agent, and subsequently a publishing deal.' It didn't take that long for her to pass the Certified Sommelier examination, from the Court of Master Sommeliers, in 2011, the year after her spontaneous debut.

Perhaps it's to be expected that a sommelier would do double-duty as a detective: the first course in sommelier training is called the 'deductive tasting method,' harkening to the deductive reasoning that Sherlock Holmes himself brought to bear on his cases.

The books are lively and breezy, well-plotted and heightened by danger, and carry some risk to our heroine – until romantic interest Detective Dean manages to appear at just the right time. But it's the wine that carries the stories, not only in milieu but in the details.

Each chapter is 'paired' with a wine that evokes the tone of the narrative in sometimes oblique, sometimes illuminating ways: the opening chapter of each book starts with a sparkling aperitif; a suspect might be introduced by a brooding Primitivo; a romantic interest by a Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

'I haven't repeated one yet,' said Nettmann, an attractive blonde who laughs easily. 'So you can read different wines in 'Decanting,' and different wines in 'Uncorking.' I'm working on a third book now, and hoping to not repeat any wines as well.'

Naturally there's the temptation for the reader to start each chapter with a glass of the suggested wine, but it's far from obligatory. For one thing, some of the wines are at price points well out of reach of many a genre mystery fan. And, as Nettmann admits, 'I'm not sure it would be healthy.'

Nettmann currently lives in L.A. with her husband, and is already deep in the rewrite of the third book in the series, 'Pairing a Deception,' due out in May 2018. She admits that she plans to keep her heroine moving around from one wine-growing region to another as the series progresses. 'I love traveling the wine regions,' she said. 'I love seeing where the magic of wine is created, how the hills are in that area, how the light shines on the vineyard…'

And it's not just a gimmick for the 30-something writer, but the way she lives her life. Case in point: for dinner tonight, she's planning a dish of fish tacos, paired with a New Zealand sauvignon blanc. 'I'm not sure which one yet,' she said. 'The citrus elements in New Zealand sauvignon blanc really complement the tacos.'