Monday, June 9, 2025

Murder with Wine: A Tori Winters Mystery ~ Pub Day Promo & Book Review!

MURDER WITH WINE
Tori Winters Mystery Series
Book 3
by
ANITA DICKASON

Cozy Mystery / Suspense / Mystorical Fiction
327 pages
Publication Date: June 9, 2025

Oh my gosh, what a pleasure it was to escape back into the world of Tori Winters and her wild life in Granbury, Texas. I'd been anticipating this book for some time, and I nagged the author enough to get a peek at it before it published, and coincidentally, about the same time I was visiting Granbury anyhow (I've included some of bookstagrams below). My biggest complaint is that it ended. I really need the next installment NOW, and I really need a real Red Door Inn to open in Granbury so I can stay there, drink that coffee, eat those freshly baked goods, sample that wine, and do ALL THE THINGS...except maybe be a murder suspect. Read on for my book review. ⇩⇩⇩

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ABOUT THE BOOK
Deceit Runs Deep.
Danger Runs Deeper!

What begins as a spine-tingling ghost tour, a night of unexpected thrills and chills for Tori Winters, quickly twists into something far more sinister.

Her free ticket, from an anonymous source, pulls Tori into the heart of a deadly conspiracy, entangling her in a treacherous web of murder and deceit.

While whispers of scandal ripple through Granbury, the unthinkable looms. Is Tori about to be arrested for a murder she didn’t commit?

As suspicion tightens its grip, something even more insidious lurks in the shadows, dragging her deeper into a maze of hidden motives and lethal deception. Tori is the killer's next target. 

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I don't spend time on plot summary, so please read the About the Book section above.

HALL WAYS REVIEW: Ah, it was good to be back in the world of Tori Winters and her friends and even her frenemies (Enemies? Not so much.). From the first page of Murder with Wine, author Anita Dickason pulls readers right back into Tori’s world, steaming mugs of coffee and homemade muffin in hands. And now that we’ve learned more about the stellar cellar of wine Tori owns, I’m envisioning that taste sensation as well.

I’ve been on board with this now three-book Tori Winters Mystery series from the beginning, and I recommend starting with Deadly Keepsakes simply to get the wider picture of how Tori Winters became the heiress we see in book three. However, readers can jump in with any of the three books and be thoroughly entertained.

Putting a category label on Murder with Wine and the full series is nearly impossible. With all the factoids about Granbury, Texas, and environs, plus the inclusion of real places and things that exist there, Murder with Wine falls into mystorical fiction. Cozy mystery? Yes, but it’s a gritty cozy that's getting cozier in the romance arena. With the author’s personal knowledge of law enforcement, it falls into police procedural. Plus, I’m not sure I’ve encountered this before, but we have an unreliable omniscient narrator who pops into the story here and there. Oh, and let’s not forget: with all the food and beverage intake, I’d say it’s solidly fantasy! Ha! Any regular visitor to Tori’s mansion, would end up morbidly obese and would never sleep with that much caffeine in their system.  I’m thankful that reading about deliciousness doesn’t have calories, but reading Murder with Wine did keep me awake at night, so…

“It was as if the night itself was a co-conspirator, weaving an unsettling tapestry of shadows and whispers.”

Dickason manages to weave mysteries within mysteries that keep the readers brain on high alert. Her descriptions are delightfully deep and evocative, creating specific moods. Beware her clues sprinkled throughout the book; many of them are misleading. A careful reader will definitely know who and what is off – but why? That’s another thing entirely. In Murder with Wine, I was whipping through the pages and sometimes whipping back a few to figure out the answers to every question. Even so, I never saw the resolutions coming or determined what the roles of the key players really were. Not one of them! Well done, Ms. Dickason. Well done.

In Murder with Wine, there is a wide cast of fleshed-out characters, many of whom have been there from the beginning of the series. These people feel genuine, and very much like they are living their lives just an hour south of me in Granbury. While reading, I often thought of the Nancy Drew mysteries: Mia is the Bess Marvin to Tori’s Nancy but also very much her Hannah Gruen; David is her Ned Nickerson; Parker is Carson Drew. IYKYK. Add to that a returning cast of not-so-nice snobs and new, possibly nefarious, individuals, and you have characters to like and loathe and muse upon.  

“Light spilled onto the porch, wrapping Tori in its warmth as if the house itself welcomed her home.”

It wouldn’t be a Hall Ways blog review if I didn’t complain about something, but my only complaints are that the book ended, the next one’s not available (yet?), and The Red Door Inn doesn’t exist. REALLY need to plan a girlfriends’ weekend there. I read an ARC, and even though it wasn’t the final copy, it was beautifully edited, which shows me the level of attention the author gives to her novels. That’s a true gift to readers – especially this one.

As is often the case with her books, Dickason concludes with "The Story Behind the Fiction" to enlighten readers about what’s real and what’s imagined. I love that she gives a nod to the very real Granbury Ghosts and Legends Tour and its wonderful proprietress, Brandy Herr, who’s nothing like the one in the book, thank goodness. Reading Murder with Wine leaves me hankering for more: more mystery, sure, but more coffee and baked goods and wine and warmth with people who’d surely become besties.



BUY NOW
with my affiliate links and help fund my retirement

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CLICK HERE to read Hall Ways Blog's book reviews
of the first two Tori Winters Mystery Series!
 
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Award-Winning Author Anita Dickason is a retired police officer with a total of twenty-seven years of law enforcement experience, twenty-two with Dallas PD. She served as a patrol officer, undercover narcotics officer, advanced accident investigator, tactical officer, and first female sniper on the Dallas SWAT team.


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