Deadly to the Core

Perfect for fans of Amanda Flower and Julie Anne Lindsey, when Kate Mulligan inherits her great uncle’s fruit orchard, she quickly realizes that apples aren’t the only thing that can have rotten cores.

After losing her husband in a terrible car crash, thirty-five-year-old Kate is left to pick up the pieces of her life alone. Although she has physically recovered, she worries her spirit never will. But when she learns that she has inherited a fruit orchard in a small town just outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, from her great uncle Stan, she takes this as an opportunity ripe for the picking. Kate knew immediately what to do with open a cider house. Her hopeful plans fall far from the tree when she finds the body of the orchard manager, Carl Randolph, leaving her to figure out who is at the core of this murder.

She had been in correspondence with Carl, who had agreed with her brilliant idea of opening a cider house. But not everyone is so quick to buy what she was selling—Uncle Stan’s lawyer, Robert Larabee, paints a less rosy financial outlook of the orchard’s past, present, and future. 

Kate discovers that Carl had large, unexplained deposits to his bank account and it becomes clear that either he was blackmailing someone, or someone was paying him to keep quiet. Meanwhile, Kate and her neighbors receive offers to buy their property from a mysterious buyer. And there’s more than meets the eye with the neighboring orchard owner, Daniel Martinez, although Kate can’t quite put her finger on if it’s sweet or sour.

Will she be able to pick out the bad apple among the bunch before it’s too late?

My Review:

That tag line mentioning Amanda Flower and Julie Anne Lindsey sold me on this new series. I’ve loved both Flower’s ‘Farm to Table’ mysteries as well as Lindsey’s ‘Cider Shop’ series and I’d rank ‘The Cider House Mysteries’ by Joyce Tremel right up there with them. — judging by this first book anyway.

First off – love the setting. Small town, tight-knit community and all the give and take that comes from country living. This is definitely a case of equal parts cozy and mystery, beautifully balanced in intriguing detail.

And I have to say it’s one of the best introductions to a mystery series that I’ve ever read. We meet up with a lot of characters right from the start but it’s done in such a way that each one makes an impression and is easy to remember — which is important as the mystery evolves.

Kate is easily relatable and, as someone who lives with a chronic pain condition, I appreciate that representation in a novel. (Kate was in a serious car accident and while she has mostly recovered, there are some lingering side effects that she has to deal with off and on.) She’s also a widow and I thought the way the author portrayed her grief journey was realistic and encouraging and brought depth to her story.

A solid mystery with a bevy of likely suspects made for some exciting armchair sleuthing (I was somewhat right, but mostly wrong!) I do so love a mystery that keeps me puzzling out the clues.

I listened to the audio edition narrated by Hillary Huber and enjoyed her interpretation of these characters very much. Made for an entertaining listening experience.

My thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of the audio edition of Deadly to the Core.

Please Note: While not a Christian Fiction selection, this is a clean read.