The apple harvest is in full swing, and even with orchard owner Meg Corey doing some of the picking herself, the job’s barely getting done. So when Meg’s mother, Elizabeth, shows up on her doorstep unannounced, the timing could hardly be worse. Her mother seems reluctant to tell Meg what she’s doing in Granford, but it soon comes out that she’s here to visit her old friend (and old flame) Daniel Weston. Meg’s horrified at the thought that her mother might have come to town to have an affair, but when Weston is found dead on the floor of a nearby cider house just hours after having dined with her mother, concerns of marital infidelity become the least of her worries. Elizabeth is acting strangely and Meg’s sure she’s keeping a secret. What’s more, the State Police find the timing of Elizabeth’s visit to be suspicious and warn her not to leave town. Can Meg exonerate her mother and still manage to keep her understaffed orchard afloat during her very first harvest season?

A couple of months ago, I read (and greatly enjoyed) Sheila Connolly’s Fundraising the Dead. The plot was strong, the mystery was compelling, and the characters were likable and well-developed. You can imagine my excitement, then, when I saw Connolly was due to release a new book in December, this one an installment in her Orchard Mystery series. Unfortunately, however, while my hopes were high when I cracked the cover, I finished the book feeling little but disappointment.

A Killer Crop pales in comparison to Fundraising the Dead. The plot – while serviceable – is a bit dull, the dialogue is stiff and unnatural, and the prose is clunky and riddled with awkward exposition. Connolly goes into shockingly little detail regarding Watson’s murder; she provides few clues and even fewer suspects, and doesn’t even reveal how Weston was killed until the final chapters of the book. The police detective on the case reveals to Meg rather early on that he doesn’t consider Elizabeth a serious suspect, thus eliminating whatever urgency and dramatic tension the story had going for it. And the climax of the book is, well, anti-climactic.

The main characters aren’t terribly likable (Meg in particular comes off as petulant and judgmental), and more importantly, none of them seem to like one other (including Meg and her supposed love interest, Seth). This makes it extremely difficult for the reader to become invested in an already slow story, and I, for one, found myself simply not caring who killed Weston, whether Elizabeth was a suspect, or whether Meg got her apples picked on time.

Because A Killer Crop takes place at a fictional orchard near the real-life town of Amherst, Massachusetts, there’s a lot of information here regarding of apples and the life of Emily Dickenson (Dickenson lived in Amherst), but unless you’re someone who’s profoundly interested in one or both of these topics, you’re probably better off reading another of Connolly’s books; she’s a talented writer, but A Killer Crop definitely isn’t her strongest outing.

Reviewed by: Kat