When Meg Corey's mother Elizabeth shows up at the Orchard unannounced Meg is nonplussed. It is not like her mother to drop by, especially without calling first. The timing couldn't have been worse. Meg is struggling with the hard daily labor of the first harvest she's worked at the orchard, and although she has been pitching in, the hard work is doubled when an accident leaves them short-handed with far too many apples still on the trees.

When she discovers her mother was in the region to visit an old college friend (a male old college friend) while Meg's father is off on a fishing jaunt, she jumps to the worst conclusion-- her mother is having an affair. When the old friend, Professor Daniel Weston, shows up dead, Elizabeth is the only suspect the police can come up with. As Meg helps her mother make sense of the murder, it becomes clear he was excited by a new lead in his field of study, the life of Emily Dickinson. But how could something from so far in the past cost a man his life?

Connolly has written a solid fourth entry in the Orchard Mystery series. Readers can expect the same well-crafted plot with interesting characters old and new. Rife with Emily Dickinson history and memorabilia, A KILLER CROP is another journey into rural new England, this time flavored with the high stakes world of academia's publish or perish... and sometimes both.