Grim Pickings

Auntie Alice’s apple-picking event had taken on a decidedly sour note. Kate and her husband, Jeremy, generally enjoyed the Tenders’ annual event. But this season something was gnawing away under the rosy surface like bitter rot.

Aunt Alice, the dear old girl, was really getting on—so forgetful. Had she really sprayed the trees with pesticides just before picking? And Betsy, her niece, so artfully coiffed, yet more desperately manipulative than ever. It was obvious that she was itching to get her hands on this place. Odd, too, were Wilf, Betsy’s strangely detached husband; Sue, their mousy daughter-in-law; and gorgeous daughter Anna, home since the scandalous breakup of her marriage.

This year you couldn’t even eat the apples off the trees—with the spray and all. But Anna’s estranged husband obviously missed the warning. After popping in for an unexpected visit, he was found sprawled in the orchard with four discarded apple cores next to his lifeless body—poisoned like some noxious pest.

Any way you slice it, there’s a rotten apple in Aunt Alice’s orchard. And suddenly, the pick of the harvest could be a very clever killer.

In her native Australia, Jennifer Rowe is widely recognized as an acclaimed novelist and a former editor of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Before creating the Tessa Vance series with Suspect, she wrote four crime novels featuring TV researcher Verity “Birdie” Birdwood, as well as several stand-alone suspense novels. Ms. Rowe has been called the “Agatha Christie of Australia”—and with good reason; she shares Dame Agatha’s passion for complex, puzzle-driven stories populated by vividly depicted heroes, suspects, and villains. Under the name Emily Rodda, Jennifer Rowe has also written stories for children—five of which have won the (Australian) Children’s Book of the Year Award.