The Angel's Share

The last two books I read had plots featuring Shakespeare and the First Folio. I had the fortune to see The First Folio when it was displayed at a local museum and it was pretty amazing.

In The Angel's Share by Ellen Crosby, Lucie Montgomery is asked by her billionaire neighbor Prescott Avery to join him in his wine cellar for a glass of the rare Malmsey Madeira. They leave the ongoing holiday party in his house and wind up in his newly remodeled, spectacular vault in the cellar. (The Angel's Share will be released by Minotaur Books on November 5.)

Surprising her, Prescott asks Lucie if he can purchase the Madeira her great uncle Ian brought back to Virginia in the 1920s. Stunned by his request Lucie confesses she knows nothing about it. Prescott claims the Madeira bottles dates back to 1809, and were going to be used by James Madison to celebrate the 4th of July.

It's Prescott's plan to reveal something he discovered connected to Shakespeare and his plays, and toast the findings with his Mason brothers. He reveals a hand written copy of the Declaration of Independence given to James Madison by his friend Thomas Jefferson.

He swears her to secrecy and she finally convinces him she knows nothing about the over 300-year-

old Madeira. Her father Leland was a gamble and a risk taker, and she is sure he squandered the Madeira to pay debts. She's stunned when he asks her about Leland's second safe deposit box. He also implies he has discovered a secret to a long lost mystery, but he declines to tell her what it is. Lucie flees from the cellar and rushes to find her fiance Quinn. She also discovers she left her phone in Prescott's value and returns to retrieve it.

What she finds shocks her - Prescott's dead body crumpled on the floor with a decanter of his precious Madeira leaking on to the carpet. Everyone wants to believe he tripped and fell, especially as he is 95 years old, but eventually the police believe it was murder.

There are plenty of suspects especially as all is not well in the Avery household. Prescott was planning to sell some of his newspaper empire including the flagship Washington Tribune. He also planned to donate most of his art and treasure to the Caritas Commitment. His grandson and granddaughter are at each others throats at the newspaper and some of his other relatives are worried about his donation concept.

Lucie, bewildered by more treachery from her late father, embarks on a quest to find the Madeira and uncover the clue Prescott Avery was sure her father had. This leads her through Jamestown, Williamsburg, to a rumor about Shakespeare and Sir Francis Bacon, to the Folger Shakespeare Library (and the First Folio) and to the origins of the U.S government.

Sounds like National Treasure, but it's a much better story. Another exceptional story by Ellen Crosby.

Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley.