In my first draft of this review, written when I was about halfway through the book, I planned to compare Grand Cru to that pink wine that comes in a box: humorously silly and not very good, but not offensively bad, either. Then I continued reading and met Franco and Maxey Pinjatta, who are the most outrageously bizarre villains I have ever encountered. That’s about when I revised my grade downward.

Clara Addey is a successful (and rich) San Francisco designer whose father, Alberto Morelli, is a successful (rich) vineyard owner. Her boyfriend is a nose, or wine connoisseur, named Henri Lamarque (he also seems to be quite rich). Henri tastes a Montebanque that he says is not really a Montebanque – it may be a fraud. (Isn’t a mountebank a fraud by definition?) The Montebanque wine is owned by the Pinjatta family. The Pinjattas want to buy Alberto’s vineyard.

For the first 134 pages, not much happens. Clara goes about her business, plans her father’s wedding, wonders if she loves Henri, and drinks lots of wine. She spends many, many pages conversing with herself internally, for our benefit, which makes for pretty slow reading. During this time, Henri tells Clara that the Pinjattas are bad guys. She meets a (rich) businessman who also tells her that the Pinjattas are bad guys. Even without all these portentous warnings, only the most deeply stupid of characters could meet Steve Pinjatta and not realize that he is a bad guy — he seduces clients’ wives and leaves incriminating evidence lying around where anyone can see it. (Of course, even before we meet them we know that Steve is small potatoes compared to his father and uncle, Maxey and Franco Pinjatta.)

Finally, on page 135, someone tries to murder Henri and Clara, who are standing in the way of the Pinjattas’ purchase of Alberto’s vineyard. Could the Pinjattas be behind the crime?

Maxey and Franco, at last, make their long-foreshadowed appearance. They bully, bluster, menace old ladies, and behave with such loathsome idiocy that it is incredible that either of them was able to get a job, much less become successful businessmen. Maxey’s hair is so greasy that after he runs his fingers through it he surreptitiously wipes his hand on the tablecloth; that’s even more disgusting when we learn that he’s got a live bird living in his coiffure. Franco farts and has seizures during business meetings; he is accompanied by a “nurse” who, when he’s feeling under the weather, lets him suck her breasts. At business meetings!

Things get so strange that, towards the end, the book takes on a surreal hallucinogenic quality that I do not believe the author intended. During the book’s climax, a handful of buckshot falls out of Franco’s buxom nurse’s underpants. You see, she was shot in the fanny with a shotgun a few days before. When something like that happens, all I can do is shake my head in amazement that this book ever got published.

Grand Cru fails on every level that I can think of. It fails as a suspense, being in turns boring and ludicrous. It doesn’t contain characters that I care about or identify with, although Henri, a flamboyant sort of High Priest of Wine, is rather amusing. And it doesn’t work as a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the wine industry, because it doesn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know. Besides, it’s so weird that I wouldn’t trust anything it told me.

If you want to read a thriller about the wine industry, read Proof by Dick Francis. That book is intelligent, informative, and well-written. It features sympathetic characters and contains real suspense. Grand Cru has a certain undeniable humor value, but I no longer want to compare it to the pink wine that comes in a box. It’s just not that good.