When Worlds Collide

Original Skin by David Mark

Original Skin is the second book in the Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy series, set in the gritty, down-at-heel northern England port city of Hull. The debut book, The Dark Winter, introduced us to this very different kind of copper.

Aector is a lumbering, gentle giant, with a face that semaphores his every emotion. This embarrasses him, since he prefers not to draw attention to himself:

"Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy spent his first months in plain clothes taking the title literally. He all but camouflaged himself in khaki-coloured trousers, hiking boots and cheap, mushroom-hued shirts; tearing them fresh from polythene packets every Monday. The disguise never worked. At 6 foot 5 inches, and with red hair, freckles and a Highlander moustache, he is always the most noticeable man in the room."

The Dark Winter started with a hard-to-take crime, the public murder of a young girl, but Original Skin begins on an even darker note. A young, elaborately tattooed gay man, Simon Appleyard, extends an online invitation to a stranger to come and engage in a bit of BDSM. The stranger strangles Simon with Simon's own belt, staging the scene to make it look like a session of autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong. The authorities take a brief look at the sordid scene and are only too willing to take it at face value. But Simon's similarly flamboyantly inked friend, Suzie, who is also a regular at the sex clubs and anonymous BDSM hookup scene, is being text-stalked by someone who seems to be connected with that demimonde, and Suzie thinks that "X" is out to get her, just like Simon.

Aector's primary assignment at the moment is investigating the insanely violent drug war that has broken out in the marijuana market. The cannabis-growing and -marketing business had been dominated by old-school local criminals and Vietnamese immigrants, but it looks like they're being muscled out by some new crowd that delivers its eviction notices with nail guns to the body. Aector is committed to the investigation, but he feels compelled to spend his almost-nonexistent spare time looking into Simon Appleyard's death.

He's like that. Despite being surrounded by tough-as-nails colleagues, and dealing with scuzzy informants and combative villains on a daily basis, he hasn't learned to be cynical. He is a compassionate soul, and downright naïve at times. As if these two investigations aren't taxing enough, local politicians begin to feature in the inquiries––and these politicos play the game like a blood sport.

As in The Dark Winter, Aector's refuge from the trials of his job is his home, with his wife Roisin, who comes from a "Traveller" family, and their two small children. In this book, we learn a little more about Roisin's past and about the Traveller world she came from. Learning a lot more is something I look forward to in future books. Roisin is a tiny creature, and not just in comparison to Aector, but her personality is big and she's as outspoken as Aector is reserved:

"It was his young wife, Roisin, who put at stop to his attempts to blend in. She told him that, as a good-looking big bastard, he owed it to himself not to dress like a 'fecking bible-selling eejit.' Roisin has a way with words."

In many ways, each thread of the plot is about the clash of different worlds. The social values of the Travellers are sometimes so opposed to Aector's that the difference threatens his relationship with Roisin. The drug war represents a new, highly organized and shadowy criminal hierarchy displacing the old-time, homegrown villains. The sex scene where Simon and Suzie were regulars had seemed like an environment to play at taking risks, but was now confronted by a new element that turned the play-acting risks real––and deadly.

A more comic-relief kind of clash occurs in Aector's relationship with his brash boss, Trish Pharaoh. The two couldn't be more different, which is probably why they work so well together. Though, I suppose, "well" might not be the correct adverb for a relationship in which Aector's guilelessness frequently prompts Pharaoh to tell him that she badly wants to club him over the head.

The bleakness of Hull and its sordid and violent crimes make this dark reading, lightened by the Trish-and-Aector byplay and several other Aector moments. Somehow, Aector always seems to stumble into the oddest situations: having to chase down a runaway horse in city traffic and horse-whisper him into compliance, thus saving the horse from a tranquilizer-gun shot at best; being challenged to a bare-knuckled fight that Roisin tells him he is honor-bound to accept; bringing cops and suspects home for breakfast with the wife and playtime with the kids. It all makes Aector a crime-novel protagonist you'd like to sit down with for a pint––but probably wouldn't want to be partnered with, either at work or at home.

Original Skin was issued May 16, 2013, by Blue Rider Press (an imprint of the Penguin Group). If you're looking for a refreshingly different protagonist and a gritty, north-of-England style police procedural, give the Aector McAvoy series a try.

Note: I received a free publisher's review copy of Original Skin. Versions of this review may appear on Amazon, Goodreads and other review sites, under my usernames there.

Review of Her Last Breath by Linda Castillo

In Her Last Breath, the fifth novel in Linda Castillo's award-winning Kate Burkholder series, Amish Deacon Paul Borntrager is returning home one rainy evening with his three young children behind Sampson, the sorrel horse he has painstakingly trained for buggy duty. Without warning, a pickup truck roars out of a blind intersection and smashes into the buggy, killing Paul, the horse, and two of his children. The truck does not stop, and precious minutes pass before the police are called.

When the dying Paul greets Painter's Mill police chief Kate Burkholder by name, she realizes with horror that this is the family of her closest childhood friend, Mattie. When Kate tore herself away from her Amish family and community as a young woman, beautiful Mattie had stayed in the Plain Life, married Paul, and bore his children.

While Holmes County has jurisdiction, Sheriff Rasmussen is quite relieved to have Kate notify Mattie of the accident. Historically, the Amish are skeptical of police and uninterested in retribution through the legal system. They believe that everything that happens comes from God, and their sometimes terrible duty is to accept, forgive, and remain faithful. After the horrible and very real slaughter at the Nickel Mines Amish School, families of the victims visited and comforted the family of the shooter, publicly announced their forgiveness of the crime, and even set up a charitable fund for his wife and children.

Before driving to Mattie's place, Kate stops to pick up the Amish Bishop, with whom she has a long and stormy history. When he answers her late night knock with an urgent "What is wrong?" Kate can only burst into tears. Her professional composure recovered, she drives the bishop to Mattie's, then when Mattie's shock and grief are under control, takes both of them to the hospital, where David, Mattie's only surviving child, is already in surgery.

It was a curious accident scene. There were no skid marks from braking, and no debris from the vehicle except for a side-view mirror and part of a heavy-duty cotter pin. The vehicle must have blown through a stop sign at 80 miles an hour to have scattered the bodies and buggy debris so far. There was an impression of a large bolt in the wooden side of the buggy's door. After painstaking reconstruction, the police finally conclude that it had not been an accident, but deliberate murder. Was it a hate crime, or something personal?

In the meantime, a couple of boys playing in an abandoned grain elevator discovered something that could cause serious trouble for Kate and her family. Outside of her brother and sister, only her lover, Investigator John Tomasetti of the state police, knows her troubling secret.

Dr. Michael Armitage, from whose office Paul and the children were returning when they were killed, confirms that all three children had Cohen Syndrome, a genetic disorder that delays and distorts mental and physical development. It is rare, and found mostly in narrow gene pools. Mattie and Paul, both healthy themselves, must both be carriers. He also confirmed that it was usually Mattie, not Paul, who brought the children to their weekly appointments. From there, the story moves quickly to a breathtaking, if somewhat sketchy, conclusion that nearly solves all of Kate's problems forever––at the bottom of a lake!

Amish Funeral by Bill Coleman

This is the fifth in the author's Kate Burkholder series, but the first I have read. Consequently, I don't know if the body found in the old grain elevator is a surprise to followers of the series, but it added a whole new dimension, which remains unresolved, to the story. The story moved nonstop, and the histories of these two remarkable women and the secret burdens they each carry almost overshadowed the chilling murder mystery at times.

The book is written in the first person, from Kate's perspective, and in the present tense. While I often find this annoying in a novel, this one moved so fast that I quickly forgot about it. While I found the plot rather thin and improbable, the author offers a few fresh insights into this fascinating and secretive society in the setting of a truly heinous crime.

Note: I received a free review copy of Her Last Breath, which will be released by Minotaur Books on June 18, 2013. Portions of this review may appear on other sites under my user names there.

Review of Michael Koryta's The Silent Hour

The Silent Hour by Michael Koryta

The Silent Hour isn't one of those Michael Koryta gothic horrors or supernatural noirs that you read trembling under the bedcovers. Rather, it's the fourth book in his Lincoln Perry series, about a former Cleveland, Ohio police detective turned hardboiled private eye.

Lincoln, who narrates, is a skilled and relentless investigator. His partner in Perry and Pritchard Investigations, widowed ex-cop Joe Pritchard, has been in Florida for months, recovering from gunshot wounds and contemplating retirement. Lincoln is considering retirement too. He misses the companionship and advice of Joe, a naturally cautious man, who as a kid "probably did background checks on the neighbors before trick-or-treating at their houses." Money from a job Lincoln did for his ex-fiancée could remodel the gym he owns. He's tired of putting his girlfriend Amy in danger and hearing the security bar go across her apartment door as he leaves.

Is it, then, any wonder that when he receives a series of letters asking for help from convicted murderer Parker Harrison, Lincoln tosses them into the garbage? Months later, the persistent Harrison himself shows up at Lincoln's office. He doesn't want Lincoln to investigate the murder that sent him to prison, but the whereabouts of "kind, compassionate, beautiful" Alexandra Cantrell, who dreamed of helping released violent offenders reenter society. She and her husband Joshua developed a program that tried to connect parolees with nature at their special house in the woods, Whisper Ridge. Upon leaving prison, Harrison joined them there for a year. Then the Cantrells disappeared without a trace.

That was 12 years ago. Now, Harrison tells Lincoln, "I see you as a storyteller. You take something that's hidden from the world, and you bring it forward, give us answers to our questions, give us an ending. It's what you do, and you seem to be very good at it."

That's true. Lincoln takes the case and it isn't long before he's deeply disturbed. Carved beside the door at Whisper Ridge is a strange epitaph, "Whisper Ridge—Home to Dreams—November 6, 1992-April 27, 1996." He discovers that Joshua's skeleton was unearthed in Pennsylvania six months earlier, right before Harrison began writing him. In addition, one of the parolees died mysteriously shortly after leaving the Cantrells. It's clear that Harrison is not being open and honest. To make matters worse, Lincoln learns that Alexandra comes from a major Youngstown, Ohio mob family and her uncle, Dominic Sanabria, pays Lincoln an unwanted visit. Dominic states that he liked Joshua and says of the missing Alexandra, "Every family has their darling, and she is ours."

The dual nature of the characters makes Lincoln's investigation very challenging. Do-gooders Alexandra and Joshua have connections to the Sanabria mob. Although Harrison and the Cantrells' other parolees are murderers, they have stayed out of trouble since their release. How far can they be trusted? What about Dominic?

Lincoln wants nothing to do with an investigation that touches the Sanabria family. He continues, at the request of Pennsylvania cop Quinn Graham, working on Joshua's homicide, and Pittsburgh PI Ken Merriman, hired by Joshua's parents when he first disappeared 12 years earlier. Ken is reluctant to quit because he dreams of impressing his 14-year-old daughter. In some ways, Graham, Ken and other law enforcement officers interested in bringing down Dominic Sanabria are almost as troublesome for Lincoln as the criminals. They're jealous of their turf, hampered by a lack of resources and blinded by obsession. Lincoln can't entirely trust them either.

The case isn't solved before Joe's return from Florida, another murder and so many plot twists and double dealings that Lincoln's inquiries reminded me of a ball making its way through a pinball machine. It's no wonder Lincoln ponders his commitment to life as a PI.

The Silent Hour is an imaginative and beautifully constructed book about ambition and betrayal, broken dreams and new beginnings, and the crippling nature of obsession. Koryta obviously knows Cleveland. The prose is crisp but often lovely:

That night strips of coal-colored clouds skidded over a bright three-quarter moon, pushed by a spirited wind off the lake. I sat on the roof of my building and marveled at their speed, stared long enough that the lights and sounds of the street below faded and I was held by the rhythm of the clouds, by the vanishing and then resurfacing moon. If I looked long enough, it seemed I wasn't on the roof anymore, could instead be miles out at sea, nothing in sight but that moon and those clouds. 

Yeah, I'd had a bit to drink.

I cared about what happened to Koryta's complex characters. Lincoln, introduced in Tonight I Said Goodbye, is a classic shamus in the manner of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer or Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. Since The Silent Hour was published in 2009, Koryta has written four stand-alone novels. I hope he'll give us another Lincoln Perry book soon.

Not Jane Austen's Persuasion

Lexicon by Max Barry

When you think about it, much of life consists of persuading people to do what you want.

Parents try to get kids to get up in the morning, do their homework and chores, and shape up in general.

Husbands and wives do a dance of subtle and not-so-much maneuvers to keep the domestic partnership running.

Employees try to get raises, promotion and recognition out of their bosses, while bosses try to get more and better production out of their employees.

Politicians and political talk show commentators wield rhetorical swords and shields to gain voter and viewer support for their positions.

In times of war and crisis, propaganda machinery accelerates into high gear to get all citizens mobilized.

Sales and marketing are all about persuasion; in advertising, brand reputation, design, use of spokespersons.

In the persuasion game, one size does not fit all. The style that works on kids is different from what works on a spouse, boss, constituent, citizen, or consumer. And, of course, within each of those categories, to be truly effective, messaging must be tailored to fit different types of people.

But how can you persuade somebody you don't know? How can you tailor your messaging for your different targets? The internet is making that job easier. Think about all the clues you leave about yourself every time you go online. When you shop, the vendor collects all that data about your browsing and buying, and customizes sales emails to you based on your history. The vendor might sell that information too, and next thing you know, your email box is stuffed with offers of products.

Some vendors use surveys, enticing users with the chance of winning some prize. The survey questions may be about vendors and products, but the sponsor is using your answer just as much to collect information about you. Even those entertaining poll questions are just part of the vast machinery of data collection.

It's possible to use online resources to find out most people's age, sex, home address (along with its value and images of it), renter or homeowner status, amount owed on any mortgage, educational level, marital and child status, political and religious affiliations, causes contributed to, involvement in litigation, criminal records, and the grab-bag of information that can be gleaned from social networking sites. With all this data, vast swathes of the population can be sliced and diced into categories that receive targeted persuasive messaging.

It's scary how much somebody can find out about us, isn't it? And yet we let sites collect "cookies" that leave a rich trail of information about us, we answer surveys and polls, and loads of people practically lay bare their entire lives on Facebook. Why? In his new book, Lexicon, one of author Max Barry's characters explains it this way:

"We attempt to conceal ourselves, . . . but the truth is we do not entirely want to be concealed. We want to be found. Every[one], sooner or later, discovers this: that within perfect walls, there is nothing worth protecting. There is, in fact, nothing. And so we exchange privacy for intimacy. We gamble with it, hoping that by exposing ourselves, someone will find a way in. This is why the human animal will always be vulnerable: because it wants to be."

You wouldn't think that a novel of such thought-provoking ideas about language, psychology and persuasion would begin in a men's room, would you? Well, let's just start by saying that this is a novel with many layers.

The first of two narratives is a thriller, which opens with one of our two protagonists, Wil, in an airport bathroom, where two men grab him, do something to him that will make you yelp, and hustle him out with them. Lots of spectacularly bad things happen at the airport when Wil tries to escape, just one of which is Wil's girlfriend trying to kill him. Wil decides it might be best to accompany the two guys after all, at least for a little while.

A mad, frequently violent, chase across states and even continents follows. Wil has no idea what it's all about, and keeps asking questions, but his captors aren't much given to explanation. Finally, when he says he needs to understand what's going on, the tall captor, Tom, snarls:

"You don't need to understand. You need to sit there and not do anything stupid while I take care of you. That's what you need. Look, I get that it's been a confusing night. And now you're all, But how is that possible, and Why did he do that. But I'm not going to answer those questions, Wil, because you don't have the framework to comprehend the answers. You're like a kid asking how I can see him even though he's closed his eyes. Just accept that this is happening."

Interspersed with this thriller story is the years-long tale of Emily Ruff's unique coming of age. Her last name is "Ruff" for a reason. She starts out as a street person in San Francisco, eking out a bare living running a three-card monte game for a handler. She's scruffy and uneducated, but with a quick intelligence and an instinct for manipulation.

Emily is recruited by a secret, unnamed organization that takes on people who are already talented at persuasion and gives them intensive schooling in personality analysis, neurolinguistics, logic and rhetoric. The goal for these "poets" is to learn command words that work to "compromise" (i.e., control) each of 218 personality types, or "segments."

As if that's not alarming enough, the organization's head, Yeats, contends that there is a language of "barewords"––the fundamental "machine language" of the human mind––which has a lexicon so powerful it can control all personality types. What could go wrong there? This will give you an idea:

"Regular compromise feels like sharing the cockpit. Like there's someone else in there with you, flipping switches behind your back. This [compromise via bareword] gave me no sensation of being able to regain control. None at all. It felt like being worn. By something primal."

Wil and Emily's stories come careening at each other, until they collide explosively in––of all places––the sun-blasted decrepit mining town of Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia.

Max Barry's writing is fluid and natural, with just the right amount of subtle, but acerbic wit. Lexicon holds the current record for number of Post-It notes in my 2013 reading. Sometimes an entire page is notable, and other times I'm taken by a throwaway line like: "The man had red cheeks and was divorced, although he didn't know it yet."

Lexicon will be published on June 18, 2013, by the Penguin Press. Even if I knew your segment, I wouldn't know just the right words to compel you to read Lexicon, so I'll just say it's the most original and engaging book I've read so far this year, and I hope you'll give it a try.

Notes: I received a free publisher's review copy of Lexicon. Versions of this review may appear on Amazon, Goodreads and other reviewing sites under my usernames there.

Seven Books for Seven Mothers

Mothers. We celebrate 'em here in the United States on Mothers Day, this Sunday. Whether you need a gift for your mother or want to read a book in her honor, check out some of the following ideas:

For the mother whose math skills evaporated when letters appeared in your homework equations, but she gamely insisted on helping you anyway: Yokō Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor. After a mysterious accident in 1975, a Japanese mathematician can only remember new things for 80 minutes. The baseball-obsessed professor copes by covering himself with post-it notes and hiring a housekeeper with a young boy, whose flat head reminds him of a square-root sign. Heart-warming and wonderful.

Have a mother who caught you drinking and smoking in the garage when you were 13 and read you the riot act in words you can still recall today? Pay her back with Patrick Hamilton's masterpiece of black comedy, Hangover Square, set in 1939 London before England declared war on Germany; or Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, which follows the alcoholic British consul Geoffrey Firmin as he drinks himself to death in a small Mexican town on the Day of the Dead in 1938. Or A Drop of the Hard Stuff, in which Lawrence Block's ex-cop turned PI Matthew Scudder looks back at his first year off the bottle. Or Geoffrey Homes's 1940 Finders Keepers, featuring Humphrey Campbell, a hardboiled private eye who only drinks milk. Daniel Mainwaring (whose pseudonym was Homes) also wrote Build My Gallows High, the powerful novel of suspense that was filmed as Out of the Past with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas.

Your mom recognized your inner savage and swore to civilize you and your brother before you left home. Nice try, but no cigar. As we crime fiction fans know, there is no air too rarified for violent death: A murderer at the ballet keeps publicist Peter Cutler Sargeant II on his toes in Death in the Fifth Position by Edgar Box (pseudonym of Gore Vidal). When a cathedral organist is murdered in Holy Disorders, by Edmund Crispin, eccentric Oxford don and part-time detective Gervase Fen investigates. Murder in the Museum of Man, by Alfred Alcorn, features a prissy MoM recording secretary, Norman de Ratour, who tackles a murder that might involve cannibalism. This academic spoof definitely involves oodles of black humor and wit. In 1949's Engaged to Murder, by M. V. Heberden, someone has the bad manners to commit murder at a Buenos Aires dinner party of Americans, Anglo-Argentines, and French expats. Then private eye Rick Vanner, an ex-naval intelligence officer, becomes involved. Don Winslow's The Kings of Cool: Prequel to Savages, is set in 1960s southern California and is anything but civilized. If you've seen Oliver Stone's Savages, based on Winslow's novel of the same name, you'll know what I mean.

Bedtime when you were a kid always meant a reassuring peek under the bed for monsters and a soothing night-time story. Then your mom crept to bed and lulled herself to sleep with something like German writer Leonie Swann's charming and quirky tale about some sheep who solve their shepherd's murder in Three Bags Full. Or maybe your mom was under the covers with a flashlight, breathing through her mouth and reading a Stephen King book like The Stand, in which a superflu wipes out almost the entire United States, or a Joyce Carol Oates novel such as The Accursed, stunning and macabre historical fiction set in early-20th century Princeton, New Jersey. King's son, Joe Hill, just published a scarefest titled NOS4A2. That's what's on the license plate of Charles Manx's 1938 Rolls Royce Wraith. In it, Manx takes children on a terror ride to Christmasland. For an adrenaline rush, Paul Doiron's Bad Little Falls, about a search for a murderer in a Maine snowstorm.

If your marriage into a family of nutbars was a mistake, it's in spite of your mother's warnings. Or perhaps your mother's own family is bonkers. For reading about families rocked by crime, there's an excellent legal mystery by Jay Brandon, Defiance County, set in the gorgeously spooky Piney Woods of Texas; John Hart's Edgar Award-winning The Last Child, in which Johnny Merrimon loses his twin sister Alyssa; and Michael Cox's literary The Meaning of Night: A Confession, which begins with our narrator murdering a stranger for practice. In Indian writer Manu Joseph's funny, but tragic 2013 novel, The Illicit Happiness of Other People, Ousep Chacko tries to understand why his oldest son, a gifted cartoonist, killed himself.

Your mom didn't know much about cars, but that didn't stop her from issuing good advice about them, like always wear clean underwear in case an accident sends you to the hospital; don't buy a black car because it gets too hot or a white one because it shows the dirt; and always check for a killer lurking in the backseat before getting behind the wheel. Pay homage to your mom with Simon Wood's Did Not Finish, in which rookie British race-car driver Aidy Westlake investigates the crash that killed a fellow driver.

Did your mother keep a kitchen so clean, your family could get down on all fours and eat off the floor? Perhaps she was adventurous and nontraditional enough to love eating this way. She'd like Rivka Galchen's beautifully weird and moving debut, Atmospheric Disturbances, in which a New York psychiatrist claims that his South American wife has disappeared and been replaced by a "simulacrum." She'd also enjoy Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, full of word play and double meanings, and Michael Dibdin's world-weary Italian cop Aurelio Zen, who investigates after a Catholic mass is interrupted by a fall from St. Peter's dome in Cabal.

It's not rare for a mother to have eyes in the back of her head, a bat's sense of hearing, and an early-warning system that recognizes you're heading for trouble before you know it yourself. For you or her: John le Carré's just released A Delicate Truth, which involves a counter-terrorist operation code-named Wildfire in Gibraltar, or Michael Marshall Smith's Spares, featuring ex-soldier, ex-detective Jack Randall, who deals with a future dystopia in rural Virginia.

I've suggested more than seven books, but my mother taught me not to skimp and not to be lazy. I hope all mothers, and all of you fondly remembering your mothers, have a wonderful Mothers Day.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

The weather forecasters keep predicting nice weekends that don't materialize, and it's frustrating because I think it's time to get the hoe on the road. Gardening wisdom for the mid-Atlantic coastal regions is that small plants and seedlings are probably safe from Jack Frost after Mother's Day, which is on its way. Since we seem to be hovering about 20° below the average for this time of year, my usual gardening activities have been put on hold. While I'm waiting, it's appropriate to move onto Plan B: armchair gardening.

When I think of gardening mysteries, Sheila Pim comes instantly to mind. She was an Irish author who wrote her first detective novel, Common or Garden Crime, to satisfy her father's thirst for detective stories. There was a dearth of these, because publications of the same had been curtailed due to the paper shortages that affected neutral Ireland during what they called the "Emergency," and the rest of the world called World War II.

Pim was one of the first mystery writers to integrate a gardening background into her novels. For Pim, as well as the protagonists in her work, the horticultural details were essential to the plots, but they were also pivotal to the characters' daily lives. Gardening was not just a hobby, but also a necessary way of living, because it provided crucial foodstuffs in times of scarcity. It was also a part of the social activities in the community, such as flower shows and vegetable competitions.

Common or Garden Crime takes place around 1943, when things were looking better both on the war front and in Clonmeen, a small village on the outskirts of Dublin. Lucy Bex lived there with her brother, Linnaeus, at Annalee Lodge. She had taken care of her sibling and his son, Ivor, who was away in the R.A.F., for many years. On one particularly beautiful summer morning, she was contemplating how peaceful everything was in this edenic locale, while parts of the world were anything but. She felt that the unnatural serenity was too good to last. She was right.

The Bexes and all their neighbors were looking forward to the upcoming flower show. A prelude to this was a small tea party at the neighboring Beechfield, inhabited by the Nichol-Jervises. The Osmunds, a couple new to town, were part of the gathering.

At any affair given by the N-Js, a tour of the garden was de rigueur. As the party circled the yard, one particular planting became the center of the conversation. It was a grouping of Arabian monkshood. Linnaeus labeled it Aconitum ferox, and it was so named because it was ferociously poisonous. All monkshood is toxic, but this type was more rare and more potent. Still, the general feeling of the members of the party was calm and untroubled. There wasn't much concern, either, when the next day it was found that the monkshood had been taken in the night.

It can be said that many grow up believing that all evil began in a garden. I was one of these. I wasn't too old when I realized that, like many other things, it was simply another case of cherchez la femme or better said find a femme to blame it on. In this particular story, it was a femme, Lady Madeleine Osmond, who was found poisoned the next day from monkshood mixed in the horseradish sauce.

Horseradish

Monkshood

Sheila Pim recounts the events in a slightly unusual format, by presenting two non-adversarial, but parallel, investigations. The Guards pursue their investigation, while Lucy Bex––an amateur sleuth who is privy to her neighbors' secrets––pursues her own inquiries.

It is through the small domestic details that the murderer is uncovered. For instance, in those days, planning meals was dictated more by circumstances than desires. Lack of freezers and most refrigeration was not on hand, so the weekend before a bank holiday, you had to think of having something cold left over for Monday. Lamb was scarce and what was available was only enough for one meal. Nobody liked cold mutton, and pork was no good in August. The only choice, therefore, was beef and since mustard was no longer available, it was natural that horseradish would be served.

Pim's books might be described as novels of how ordinary people react when their lives are disrupted by extraordinary events, such as murder or war. While she wrote many things, her gardening mysteries number only four. The others––all standalones––are Creeping Venom, A Brush With Death and A Hive of Suspects, all of which were republished by Rue Morgue Press. I can recommend them all.

Michelle Wan is another author who writes interesting stories with a botanical background. Hers take place across the pond in the Dordogne, in northwest France.

Slipper Orchid

Deadly Slipper features more exotic blooms and presents a different scenario involving flora and felony.

Julian Wood is pottering in his workroom when he gets a call from a woman who needs his botanical expertise, particularly his knowledge of orchids. Twenty years ago, Bedie, a young woman hiking in the forest in the southwestern forest of France in the area of the Dordogne, disappeared. The only clue in all those years to finally come to light is a camera with the film still intact. The girl's twin sister, Mara, has had the film developed and it reveals a series of landscapes and very good pictures of orchids. One orchid in particular has never been seen in this area before. This series of pictures might help in the location of Bedie's last day if the area of the orchids can be identified.

Aside from the exotic plants the countryside is peopled with eccentric characters. There is a woman nicknamed "hoe" because she was lethal with one in her hand, with a hulk of a son who communicated with few words and is thought to be unusual. There is a local well-known family who live in the "chateau" with a sad history and the locals are protective of them. There are others who have lived in the area since the time of Bedie's disappearance. Julian himself has been somewhat of a hermit and he does have an interest in horticulture and orchids.

The book is rich with descriptions of the Dordogne and is spiced up with savory details of French cooking. The theme ultimately is one of a serial killer preying on young women, and Mara does not know whom to trust. But for a killer to hide so well in plain sight, he must have on very good camouflage. You or I would possibly think him very likeable, non?

The next in her series is The Orchid Shroud.

Aside from the visual beauty and gratification of other senses, some gardens have more to offer. They can tell, or contrarily bury, a story.

Even in Europe, it has been colder than usual this year, but Italy is a wonderful place for gardens. In The Savage Garden, a Mark Mills mystery, Adam Strickland is a Cambridge scholar who has taken a slightly lazy approach to his studies. His professor suggests a trip to Italy to study a famous garden. The professor believes that this will pique Adam's interest.

 Naturally, there is a secret in this garden, a cipher, and Adam also believes there is a secret to be discovered in the villa itself. His natural instinct, or maybe nosiness in disguise, soon leads him to some startling conclusions about both the recent and the centuries-ago past.

 I don't know if it could be called brashness or arrogance when he begins to delve into the personal lives of the occupants of the Villa Docci. He definitely has no problems with blurting out his suspicions. As one person tells him: "You have been here hardly a week! What business is it of yours?" 


He certainly takes liberties as he toys with the rules of the house and the emotions of its inhabitants.


Aside from that, as he digs into the meaning of the statuary in the garden, he has to use all his classical knowledge to piece together this enigma. The reader is educated as well, as we are reminded of ancient myths and allegories. I am also tempted to read the book Adam was reading on his trip, which was Dorothy L. Sayers's translation of Dante's epic poem The Inferno.

Martin Edwards has written a series that takes place in the Lake District of England, where gardens abound. This series has developed some critical acclaim among blogs and British mystery discussions. I began the series at the beginning, which is a smart thing to do because the subsequent books frequently talk about people, places and things that appear in the first book, The Coffin Trail.

 The main characters are Daniel Kind, an ex-Oxford historian who is seeking the quiet life in a new location, and DCI Hannah Scarlett, a police detective who had a case fall apart on her and had been shunted to a newly formed cold case unit, of which she has been put in charge. Hannah is called to reopen a case in the series opener. The two protagonists dance around the case poking it to see if it stirs. This occupies the first 2/3 of the book.

Finally the investigation begins and proceeds nicely to an interesting conclusion.

 In The Cipher Garden, Daniel and Scarlett dance the same dance around another case of the murder of a local lothario who was also a mean, disliked man who was part owner of a landscaping business. Both Daniel and Scarlett worry at the edges of the mystery until finally the case opens up. There is a new murder and it is this one that helps the historian and the detective find the killer.


Mean while back at the ranch or the lakeside cottage Daniel is trying to figure out the mystery of his unusual garden which is called a cipher garden because it is a puzzle set up by early owners of the home to explain either their lives or their deaths. A subplot running through the story is the relationship between Daniel and his live-in girlfriend who always appears to me to be straining at the leash which is just as well because Daniel has eyes for Hannah who is already in a long-term relationship in which there are several cracks in the foundation. These little characterizations don't paint Daniel in the strongest light because the reader really questions his judgment. But not his gardening knowledge.

So now I wait with  gardening gloves in hand, trowel at the ready for my turn at the soil and the only mystery will be what kind of a mess I will make this year.