Murder in the Napa Valley: Bitter Finish by Linda Barnes

Linda Barnes. Bitter Finish (1983) Michael Spragge, scion of a rich Boston clan, actor, sometime P.I., partner in a California winery, answers a summons for help from his business partner and sometime lover. The winemaker has gone missing. A nearly headless corpse found in a derelict car on the winery estate isn’t him. Etc and so on and so forth.
     The book’s an almost page-turner, a mildly amusing entertainment, one of Barnes’ first attempts at a crime series, reissued when her value as a crime writer rose high enough. She followed up the Spraggue series with ex-cop Carlotta Carlyle, a better imagined character. *½