Kate Mulligan heads to Orchardville, PA, after she learns her Great-Uncle Stan left his home and fruit orchard to her in his will. After a devastating car accident and the loss of her husband, Kate is looking forward to this new chapter in her life. Unfortunately, Kate soon learns her new community has some rotten apples in the bunch in DEADLY TO THE CORE, the first book in the Cider House Mystery series by Joyce Tremel.
When Kate arrives in Orchardville, she quickly reconnects with her old friend Marguerite at Margie’s Morsels and meets her orchard manager, Carl Randolph. Marguerite is quick to fill in Kate on members of the community, and Carl has done an admirable job managing the orchard. He’s also on board with Kate’s idea to open a cider house. Everything is going as planned until Kate finds Carl dead in his cabin. Now Kate has to continue her plans on her own and help solve the man’s death. Some people in town liked Carl, but others questioned his motives and his large, unexplained bank deposits. Was Carl involved in something bad? Meanwhile, Uncle Stan’s lawyer, Robert Larabee, is pressuring Kate to sell her property. Once Kate learns her other neighbors have received large offers to sell their properties, she realizes something fishy is going on. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery, open her cider house, and build a new life before someone takes her out?
DEADLY TO THE CORE by Joyce Tremel is a solid and impressive debut in this new mystery series. Thirty-five-year-old Kate is starting a new life after losing her husband and being injured in a car accident. She is tough, industrious, and determined. She knows how to wield a hammer and get things done around her new cider house, as well as sniff out important clues to solve her employee’s murder. The plot is solid and includes a dishonest attorney, property rights disputes, a shady corporation, gossiping townspeople, forgery, old mines, and a lying paralegal. There are several red herrings and secondary characters to keep the action and entertainment level high. Kate’s neighbor, Daniel Martinez, also keeps readers wondering if he is a friend or foe throughout the novel. As Kate narrows in on the guilty parties, she finds herself cornered in her own cider house. Can she make it out alive, or has she created her first and only batch of Red Barn Cider? Recipes included!
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 it: 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?
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