"Never underestimate a baker."
Hello everyone!
After taking a bit of a break last week, I decided to sink my teeth into a deliciously yummy murder mystery for you all for this week's blog post.
What can I say - I'm an amateur sleuth at heart. It all goes back to watching Hercule Poirot on TV with my parents when I was younger.
Tonight's choice might not be QUITE as sophisticated as Agatha Christie's little mustachioed detective, but, that aside, it has an amiable cast and a fairly easy plot to follow, so I'd say that's a pretty good choice for anyone to watch.
They also managed to make the switch in male stars rather seamless. Ish. So hopefully that bodes well for the future!
For now, put on your aprons and get those apple peelers. One Bad Apple: A Hannah Swensen Mystery, is up next.
As we all know, Hannah (Alison Sweeney) happens to be Lake Eden's resident amateur detective, and she USED to team up with her boyfriend-turned-fiancé-turned-ex Mike Kingston (Cameron Mathison), but we learn in this installment that Mike was invited to take a job at Quantico, which is BIG.
Quantico is where they cook all those FBI agents before they let them loose into the world. So, naturally, he went, and Hannah's all open and ready for dating ... not.
Especially not with propositions from her co-worker Bradford (eugh) who keeps asking her out to dinner even though she clearly does NOT want to go. Read the room and get the hint, my guy! She's too busy teaching the cooking class YOU employed her for!
Of course things are rarely as easy as you'd wish, especially with her mother's involvement and the desire to pair Hannah up with Norman the Dentist, who's also back on our cast list, but honestly, even though Norman MIGHT like Hannah, he's supposedly dating someone and happy in that relationship, so.
Bradford has this ridiculous idea to team up his literature class with Hannah's cooking one, and things heat up when there's an explosion that rocks everybody because they don't know who might have done it.
To top things off, Bradford ends up dead soon after - and since Hannah's knife is the murder weapon, she's naturally the prime suspect!
I haven't laughed so hard in years as when THAT one was revealed. Boy oh boy, does the new prosecutor Chad Norton (Webster, and what irony is it that his name is CHAD) have a field day though, especially as they're already acquainted from a deposition hearing that he asked her to come to because of her previous sleuthing work.
Naturally, Hannah wants to clear her name, so she, her sisters and her mother (who's a PI in this one) launch their own investigation.
Turns out, plenty of people had motive to kill the sleaze that was Bradford, top of the list being his teaching assistant, but there was also a student he was failing, and his ex-wife, or more accurately perhaps her new boyfriend, though all of them seem to check out on further inspection.
There's a break in the case that gets Hannah off the hook when male DNA's found, so they now know who to focus on gender-wise, but that still doesn't bring them all that closer, especially as things get MORE complicated when one of the students - Willa, a favourite of Hannah's - turns out to have had a crush on the stupid professor.
Supposedly, nothing ever happened between them, but even so, Hannah's spidey sense is tingling when she figures out that one of Willa's friends made the high end gift card found next to the body.
I mean, okay, there's plenty of other twists and turns (not the least of which is Hannah attempting to persuade the new prosecutor to try some of her baked goods, but he persists in saying he doesn't have a sweet tooth), BUT, the important thing here is that one, Hannah figures out what her mother suspects of foul play in the case she's investigating for the murder victim's ex is ACTUALLY going to be a sweet proposal.
The ex, really happy, lets slip the only one the dead guy ever cared about was his dog, which FINALLY gets them into his phone after who knows how many false attempts, and as their suspicion falls back to the TA, they go to ask Willa if her friend might have gifted the card in question which was found as evidence to him.
Of course that's when Norman and Hannah get held up at gunpoint - by Willa - and only the timely intervention of Hannah's sisters calling in the cavalry (of a detective and prosecutor) saves them both from getting shot by Willa's brother.
Turns out, it was him all along.
Why?
Well, he figured out Willa was more into the professor than the professor was into her (steamy texts found on his phone notwithstanding); so he caused the explosion to frighten him off, but then the professor threatened to expel him from school, and since he NEEDS to graduate, he killed the guy, because that would solve all his problems.
Thankful that the one bad apple of the student corps was kicked out to the curb, Hannah finally gets the prosecutor to call her by name, is still clueless when men flirt with her, and celebrates with the others when her mom gets a landslide of offers from others who want her to solve cases for them.
And if that isn't a fitting wrap to this movie, then I don't know what is.
Charming, fun, and filled with little quips and jokes, One Bad Apple manages to navigate the field of landmines that Mathison's leave-taking left, and Webster jumps into his role remarkably well. It's also great to have BOTH of Hannah's sisters back in action, so hopefully this trend continues in following movies, I'm sure there'll be more of those.
All in all, while maybe a little convoluted at times and not as readily apparent as some of the other mysteries with Hannah at the center, One Bad Apple is an enjoyable tale to watch and puzzle your brains with. Definitely a good pick on a rainy day!
xx
*images and video not mine
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