Death on the Vine — David Benson

Death on the Vine, the 10th book in the Carina Quintana Murder Mysteries series, opens as five college-age men from well-to-do suburban Atlanta families attend a demonstration in Fort Lauderdale in June 2020. But as night falls, the formerly peaceful push for equal rights morphs into a riot and, during the melee, one of the young men produces a gun and shoots a plain clothed police officer, who dies in the street. Carina Quintana, Chief of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, witnesses the shooting, draws her service weapon and kills the young man just as he is about to open fire on a nearby demonstrator. Was the killing of the officer a senseless random killing or part of a more nefarious plan? That question is answered - or is it? - when two others in the group of five Atlantans are killed days later by rifle fire while lurking around the edges of the Florida cemetery during the dead police officer's funeral. Were their murders revenge for the killing of the officer? If so, why were only two of the four killed? And who could be capable of taking the sort of virtually impossible long-distance shots that had struck down the two young men? These questions and many more will send Carina and her people, along with agents of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, down a long and twisted path for the elusive answers. For Carina, who must also deal with a personal loss as well as with her wife Alice's severe lingering effects of a nearly deadly case of Covid-19, the pressure is nearly unbearable.While Death on the Vine is book ten of the ongoing Carina Quintana series, familiarity with the preceding nine volumes, while always desirable, is unnecessary to fully enjoy this latest entrant.