Death On The Douro

By Tony Aspler
Warwick Publishing Group, Toronto, Canada
Canadian Distributor: General Distribution Services, Etobicoke, Canada
Order Number (Ontario and Quebec 1-800-387-0141)
Order Number (North-western Ontario and all other provinces 1-800-387-0172)
US Distributor: LPC Group Chicago. Order Number 1-800-626-4330

Ezra Brant, renowned Canadian wine taster and writer (sound familiar?) is the chief protagonist in this drama on the Douro. A cocktail of sleuthing and slurping, the book makes ideal holiday reading, especially if detective fiction is amongst your other passions – wine being naturally first and foremost.


All the quintessential features of the world of Port are here: the grape stomping, the stuffy British producer (‘Absolutely right, old boy!’), the legendary Factory House and the mysterious drowning of Baron de Forrester in 1861. And all are intertwined with enough vinous name-dropping to satisfy the most ardent connoisseur.

Against this backdrop the story unfolds of Ezra Brant’s journey to the Douro at his old friend Matthew Sykes’s request. Ostensibly, the invitation is to attend the 200th celebrations of the Quinta do Santo Pedro, but in reality, to examine a series of inexplicable and bizarre incidents that seem to threaten the impending festivities. And it all culminates in a murder.

The presence (or in some cases absence) of a truculent son, a tragic beauty and an estranged wife, plus an altercation with a neighbouring quinta over ownership of land provide the reader with enough red herrings to occupy what Hercules Poirot so endearingly termed ‘the little grey cells’.

The Douro in all its glory – and gory in this case – are described with occasionally arch and/or humorous observation by the pen of Tony Aspler. Aspler’s own voice can sometimes be discerned, and I can only concur with the tongue-in-cheek sentiment expressed by Ezra Brant that ‘Wine writing was not a lucrative job. The lifestyle was enormously attractive …. but the financial rewards were slim.’

The prose is lucid and the story carries the reader along as swiftly as the current of the river of its title. Unpretentious light entertainment.

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