Ellen Crosby’s Wine Country series mixes murder with the merlot in a romp through the affluent horse and hunt country of Northern Virginia. Demand for the books is attested by their prominence - Book # 8 – The Vineyard Victims – is out this week - Book # 9 near completion and Book # 10 scheduled for next year.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

The family health challenge that led Ellen to give her heroine Lucie a limp

How having  the CIA in her backyard helps her plotting

What she loves about having a French husband

Why she's fascinated with America's past

Why mystery is popular in uncertain times

And why she's never been tempted to own a vineyard

Where to find Ellen Crosby:

Website:  www.ellencrosby.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EllenCrosbyBooks/

Twitter: @ellencrosby

Jenny:  There's one question I always like to start with and that is – was there a "Once Upon a Time” moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction, and if so, what was the catalyst

Mystery writer Ellen Crosby

Ellen: The catalyst that got me started was my husband being transferred to Geneva, Switzerland many years ago, in 1984 actually.  I was an economist, working on Capitol Hill. I thought I was going to have a very long career in Government in the working world, and then all of sudden he got this invitation to go to Geneva to open the Voice of America office and it sounded idyllic, so I quit my job and we moved to Switzerland.

My oldest son was one, and I had always wanted to write, so I thought, "I know what I'll write a novel, it can't be that hard," and of course it was really really hard, and it took me forever, and fortunately it never saw the light of day.

I lugged it around the world with me for years and finally when we lived in London I gave it a decent burial and I hope its fertilising gardens there somewhere.

Jenny:  We'll to talking about your first book a little later, I wasn't sure if that manuscript turned into Moscow Nights, but because this the The Joys of Binge Reading we do focus on books in series that people can binge read. So in the Wine Country mystery series Book Eight - The Vineyard Victims coming ou  soon - I think it's this week

Ellen:  Yes, tomorrow.

Jenny: Congratulations on that! When you started did you ever dream you'd be getting to Book Eight?

Ellen:  My first book (Moscow Nights) was published in London and my literary agent was talking with me about what I was going to do next , and we were living in London and the family had taken a trip back to America for the summer, and a friend had taken us on a tour of the vineyards of Virginia. My husband is French and we'd been living over the border from France and we'd visited all these gorgeous Virginian vineyards. I was telling my agent about this trip and she said "You know that's a great idea for a book."

I said  "Yah yah for somebody else"  - and she said "No for you."  I said "but I don't know anything about grapes and wine."  And she said "you'll figure it out, you'll learn" so I said OK I will write one.  And now Number Eight is coming out and nobody is more surprised than me.

Jenny: Certainly the series very successfully plays on the romance of wine and history.  Each book has a playful title around wine – the Merlot Murders, the Sauvignon Secret and so forth – and they are set in north Virginia – affluent horse and hunt country, with a rich history. What attracted you to that region for the setting?

Ellen: The thing we moved back to America and I knew I had to write this book.  I thought how am I going to make this realistic? So I got out the road map of northern Virginia where I live, this would be 1998 - 1999. There weren't nearly as many vineyards in Virginia then as there are now - and I thought I've got to find a vineyard close enough to home - by now I had three children - so I can be home in time for the school bus. .

So there was a vineyard in this beautiful little town called Middleburg  and  I drove out and spo...