Cozy Mystery Review: Deadly to the Core | Joyce Tremel

It’s always fun to join a cozy mystery series at book one. Joyce Tremel’s Deadly to the Core is the first in the Cider House Mysteries, and it was particularly interesting to me (a cider lover) because it centers around a woman who inherits her great uncle’s fruit orchard and decides to open a cidery in the renovated barn. A great start to a fun new mystery series!

About the Book | 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? (Synopsis from Goodreads)

Review | Deadly to the Core

Crisp, refreshing, and sweetly tart as a bite of a fresh apple, Deadly to the Core is a great start to a new cozy mystery series. The book centers around Kate Mulligan, a woman in her mid-thirties who recently became widowed after losing her husband in a car crash. Kate’s tragic loss doesn’t bring the book down (she has gone through a lot of healing before the book starts), but it added depth to Kate that made her instantly relatable as a character. Many readers will find empathy for Kate and she tries to piece together her life without the person she thought she’d spend it with.

Another tragedy (but perhaps a blessing in disguise for Kate comes when she learns that her great uncle Stan left her his fruit orchard located just outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in his will. Kate sees this as a chance for a fresh start. She hasn’t been back to the orchard owned by Stan and her grandmother since she was thirteen, but as soon as she returns all of the sweet memories come rushing back.

Despite encouragement from her uncle’s attorney, Robert Larabee, to sell the orchard, Kate wants to turn the barn into a cidery. She’s lucky when her uncle’s right-hand man, Carl Randolph, loves the idea and already began to renovations to the barn before she even arrived. But Kate’s progress comes to a halt when she discovers Carl’s body in the orchard, murdered. Kate may know how to make cider and do home renovations (largely learned from her late husband, Brian), but she has no idea how to solve a murder.

There are plenty of characters around to help Kate, including the handsome owner of the next door orchard, Daniel Martinez, and Kate’s childhood friend and owner of local café Margie’s Morsels, Marguerite Yost. A local woman named Ruth Miller fills Kate in on why her mother and grandmother were estranged. It seems that most of the locals are welcoming Kate with open arms—but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of secrets to uncover on the search for Carl’s murderer.

It isn’t just the attorney, Robert, encouraging Kate to sell. Kate soon learns that many of the neighboring orchards have received large offers to sell their property. Something seems rotten about that scenario, and Kate’s suspicions are raised. Even more troubling, Kate’s own cane that she kept from her physical therapy was the murder weapon.

There was a lot going on in this mystery, which really made it fun to read. The murder victim Carl was such a sad loss—I really liked him from the early chapters and it was clear he was a great help to Kate’s late uncle Stan. No one seemed to know much about Carl before he arrived in Gettysburg. Theories about his backstory range from the negative (he’s an escaped convict) to the mysterious (he’s in witness protection). But regardless, he’s a loss to Kate and others.

In addition to the murder, Kate uncovers some other things going on. I mentioned how many of the orchards and property in the area have received large offers to sell. Kate and Daniel discover some documents and a map in Carl’s freezer that lead to a trail of deception, from property rights disputes, blackmail, forgery, local gossip, and a shady corporation with nefarious motives. There are a lot of lies and secrets to uncover in this town!

We are kept guessing through most of the book how much Kate (and us) can trust Daniel. He often seems like he may know more than he is sharing, and despite how much he his helping Kate, I often wondered why he was so keen to offer his help. Doesn’t he have an entire orchard to run? You’ll have to read to find out!

The small town setting, a root-able main character with a tragic backstory, the beautiful orchards, quaint local stores, and a town full of secrets and gossip made this a stellar start to a cozy mystery series. There are some twists and turns and I liked that Kate was still feeling out what information and sources she could trust as she investigates. Charming and engaging, I’m looking forward to the next book!

Audiobook Review | Hillary Huber

Cozy mysteries vary in terms of how strong the narrator the choose is (and whether they seem to match the character telling the story). I though Hillary Huber’s narration was perfect—she captured Kate’s easy-going nature, sharp intellect, and voice perfectly. Definitely consider doing Deadly to the Core on audiobook if you are a fan of that format! My local library had the audiobook available on Hoopla to download instantly, which I always love. I listened to it while I was cooking dinner, doing some errands, and finished a puzzle. Perfect!

About the Author | Joyce Tremel

Joyce Tremel was a police secretary for ten years and more than once envisioned the demise of certain co-workers, but settled on writing as a way to keep herself out of jail.  She is the author of the award winning Brewing Trouble Mysteries and the upcoming Cider House Mysteries.

As Joyce St. Anthony she is the author of the Homefront News Mysteries. The first in the series, FRONT PAGE MURDER, was released March 8, 2022. Book number two, DEATH ON A DEADLINE was released November 8th, 2022.

Joyce is a native Pittsburgher and lives in the beautiful Laurel Highlands east of Pittsburgh with her husband and two cats named Hops and Lager.