Book One
One-Star Stay
He wanted her cabins. He left one star.
Then he turned up dead in her hot tub.
Mack Dowell spent twenty-six years catching liars for an Atlanta insurance company. Now she’s home in Sugar Gap, Tennessee, running her late aunt’s eleven rental cabins, a three-legged basset hound named Biscuit, and a bank balance that’s one bad review away from disaster.
So when a family reunion from Buckhead books the Summit, her priciest cabin, for a matriarch’s eightieth birthday, Mack needs everything to go right. Instead, the man paying the bill is Grant Whitlock, the developer whose shortcuts she exposed fourteen years ago, and he never forgot her name. By Friday morning he’s posted a scathing one-star review. By ten, he’s floating in the hot tub.
The sheriff blames faulty equipment. The internet blames Hollow Pines. Half the town blames Mack. But Mack knows damage, and this damage doesn’t match the story.
With a crew of nosy pickleball-playing retirees, a banjo-picking handyman, and the deputy she never quite said goodbye to, Mack has to figure out which of Grant’s nearest and dearest wanted him gone before the killer checks out for good.
Includes Mack’s apple pie recipe, glitter and all.