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.

Beach Reads from the Material Witnesses

Happy Independence Day, everyone! It's the day we celebrate the founding of our country, but let's face it: July 4th is also the unofficial kickoff of real summer. (Despite the fact that the nation's average temperature the last week of June was already about a thousand degrees.) Summer makes some people think about barbecues, baseball and swimsuits. We think about those things, too, but most of all we think about summer reading.

Reading at the beach is one of the best treats I give myself. If I have plenty of time––which happens on those occasions when I am lucky enough to be staying by the ocean––what I enjoy most is a longer story that can really take me away. The moronic part of this is that I already am where I want to be; go figure. But a book like Amagansett, by Mark Mills, takes me away in time and place, but still keeps me by an ocean.

Eastern Long Island in 1947 is that distant location. It begins one fine day in July. Conrad Labarde, a Basque fisherman, and his partner, Rollo, are hauling in their net along the beach, but the familiar twitch of the line is absent. And where are the pulls and tugs against the twine, or a flicker of a surface break? They both know that they have an inert load beneath the pewter skin of the sea, and there is nothing else to do but bring it in. It is what they hoped it wasn't: a corpse; a dead woman, still beautiful, but sea-washed and deceptively peaceful looking.

The setting for this mystery is the south fork of Long Island at Amagansett, near East Hampton and not far from the easternmost part of New York, Montauk Point.

The power of this story comes from the depths of the characters and their backgrounds. Conrad Labarde, who served in an elite unit during World War II, impressed me but, like most veterans of that conflict, he never spoke of his wartime experiences––except for one time. He said war showed that you aren't one thing or another, but all things at the same time; i.e., brave, cowardly, and selfless, but also cruel, compassionate and heartless. The only question is, which bit of you would show up next?

Right Whale

This book brought back memories of my own of a visit to Montauk Point with friends in the early '60s, and watching the breakers of the Atlantic crash on the shore as we looked out from what seemed like land's end. Mills also uses the language of the sea beautifully, and it was like a foreign, but lyrical, language to me as he spoke of longshore sets turning and right whales bound east'rd inside the bar. I loved it.

Most of the time I am not alone at the beach, and I have to pull my nose out of my reading to be social. On these occasions, the best read is my trusty Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine or Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. I received the new issue of the latter a few days ago in the mail. It includes short stories by Martin Limón and Georgette Heyer, two of my favorite authors. Heyer's story is a classic called "Night at the Inn." I can't wait to read these.

This year, for the first time ever, I don't plan to take a suitcase full of books to the beach or on trips. Instead, I will plastic-bag my e-reader and take an entire library! My favorite beach reads are usually light. Sun, surf, and beachcombing don't mix well with 800-page tomes that require much concentration. I fall asleep! A recent email from a favorite mid-list publisher listing summer price reductions and first-in-series freebies introduced me to several interesting, new-to-me detectives who seem like ideal company for long, lazy afternoons dabbling my feet in the surf.

Sister MM first introduced me to Kerry Greenwood's sophisticated flapper Phryne Fisher awhile ago, but I hadn't had a chance to follow up on the acquaintance until now. I have downloaded several books in that series, as well as three of another of Greenwood's series featuring Corinna Chapman, a contemporary accountant-turned-baker in Melbourne, Australia. That should keep me in cozies––and in Australia for awhile. It's the only way I'll get there, at least this year!

In the line of things I'd rather read about than do, a starred review in Publishers Weekly compared John R. Corrigan's Bad Lie to "Robert B. Parker and Dick Francis at their best." When the father of the protegé of PGA pro and sleuth, Jack Austin, is brutally murdered, Austin jeopardizes his career to find the killer in this fair-play noir mystery. Hmm, if it's half as good as Francis, I'll enjoy it.

Chris Cleave's Gold was released July 3, and features cyclists in this summer's Olympics in London. Very timely. Then I'll need one good long meaty book to dip in and out of for continuity. Revolutionary history is an interest, so I may try David A. Clary's Adopted Son: Washington, Lafayette, and the Friendship the Saved the Revolution. The story is told largely in letters between the two, and reading other peoples' mail sounds just right for a bit of summer snooping.

It's still up in the air, though. Any recommendations?

Not too many classic British mysteries would be considered beach reads, but I just read one: Michael Gilbert's Anything For a Quiet Life. Successful, middle-aged solicitor, Jonas Pickett, decides he's saved enough money from his north London practice to support him for the rest of his life, and that qualifies him for semi-retirement somewhere more relaxing. He takes himself off to Shackleford, a quiet beach town not far from Brighton, and sets up a practice that he hopes will only be successful enough to keep him from getting bored.

Picket has his acerbic secretary, Claire, his super-competent but somewhat contrary partner, Mrs. Mountjoy, and his general factotum (and occasional bodyguard) Sam, all of whom sometimes seem to be conspiring to turn the new practice into a full-time job. So what makes this a beach read? Well, it's set at the seaside, for one thing. Better yet, it's a collection of nine interconnected stories, each of which can be read in about the time one's attention span usually lasts when reading on the beach. Michael Gilbert's dry humor is in good supply, the stories are entertaining and not too mentally taxing, the good guys are vindicated and the bad guys vanquished. What's not to like?

I know some people like to take a big brick of a book on vacation and chip away at it day by day. I've got one of those to recommend too, this one in the thriller genre. It's Neal Stephenson's Reamde. Russian gangsters, Chinese hackers, Islamic terrorists and bears (oh my!) are just a few of the perils facing Zula Forthrast in this hyper-modern version of The Wizard of Oz. Well, that is, it's a version of The Wizard of Oz if you go along for the ride with a Dorothy (Zula) who is an Eritrean orphan refugee adopted and raised by an Iowa farm family, a Wicked Witch who is a black, Welsh, university-educated Islamic terrorist named Abdullah Jones, and a set of Dorothy sidekicks that includes a couple of Chinese 20-somethings, a huge and hairy Hungarian computer whiz and a retired Russian soldier-turned-"security expert."

Throw in a massive multiplayer online game called T'Rain, various methods of computer and internet wizardry, agents from MI-6, survivalists, a lot of extremely violent action sequences, and locations ranging from Xiamen (China), Iowa, Seattle, British Columbia, the Philippines, and London, and you've got a ride like a beachfront roller coaster.

Could it have been shorter? Definitely. Just for starters, I could have lived without a level of detail so extreme that it includes a discussion of the psychological implications involved in whether a secondary character adjusts his car seat. And it's not as if the book is nearly as impressive as Stephenson's Cryptonomicon or the Baroque Cycle, or has the kind of grand themes they have.

Yet, amidst all the shoot-'em-up action, there is a deeper meaning. It's in the way so many people care enough about others to risk their lives to help a young woman whom many of them had never previously met, and to defeat the murderous plans of nihilistically brutal terrorists. But even if you take it as just a nonstop action/adventure with a large cast of eccentric, but engaging, characters, and go along for the ride, it's a whole lot of fun.

Note: Versions of my reviews appear on the Amazon product page under my Amazon user name.

Pismo Beach, California

Reading at the beach is routine for me, because I live on California's Central Coast, minutes away from several beaches. Even so, any time I can read with the crash of waves in my ears and the grit of sand between my toes is a pleasure.

Parallel Stories, written by Péter Nádas and translated into English from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein, is my suggestion to people who relax with Proust or Thomas Mann, but who also love crime fiction. At 1150 pages, it's definitely literary fiction you can sink your teeth into. It opens in Berlin when the Wall is cracking. A body, half-buried in the snow, is found. The protagonists are three men who served as Communist spies in the West; their stories parallel and link to each other from the spring of 1939 to 1989. I'm reading it now and enjoying it very much.

If you liked Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize winner, Wolf Hall, you should take the 2012 sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, and stuff it in with your beach blanket and sunscreen. It's Cromwell's take (fictionalized, of course) on Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII. Not a happy ending for poor Anne, but a great read.

Peregrine falcons nest on Morro Rock so no climbing is allowed

Like rollicking tales of adventure while you're basking in the sun? Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road features the Frankish apothecary Zelikman, a "fair-haired scarecrow from some fogbound land," and Amram, an Abyssinian ex-soldier, whose air of stillness "trumpeted his murderous nature to all but the greenest travelers on this minor spur of the Silk Road." In A.D. 950, Zelikman and Amram escort a prince of the Khazar Empire over the Silk Route to Atil to reclaim his throne. These characters are straight outta central casting for the Arabian Nights, and their tale is sheer entertainment. Perfect for reading aloud.

Elephant seals in Morro Bay

I've found that summer books can be particularly relaxing if I read in unexpected directions; say, a sure-fire air conditioner such as Ice Run, by Steve Hamilton. It's set in frigid mid-winter in Paradise, Michigan, but ex-cop Alex McKnight's heart isn't feeling the chill. He has fallen in love with Canadian cop Natalie Reynaud, and this will cause him a world of trouble. Or, whisk from the beach to barmy horror like Jeffrey E. Barlough's Dark Sleeper, a Dickensian tale set during the Second Ice Age in the port city of Salthead, which is very much like Victorian London if you include mastodons and saber-toothed cats. It is the home of metaphysician Titus Vespasianus Tiggs and his associate, Dr. Daniel Dampe, who operate like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. They're needed on a case of spectral images haunting Salthead's residents––a headless drowned sailor, a ghost ship, and a rabid mastiff. Or, from the sanity of your blanket on the sand, question your ideas about identity and paranoia with David Czuchlewski's The Muse Asylum. Andrew Wallace and The Manhattan Ledger's Jake Burnett are former Princeton classmates once tied by their interest in the same woman. Now Jake tries to track down the reclusive author Horace Jacob Little, while his old classmate Andrew, confined to a psychiatric facility, writes confessions about his own interactions with Little.

I should reserve a spot in my beach bag for Mark Mills's Amagansett. I bet my husband and I would both like it. Space limitations mean we often share books while on summer vacation. Our last shared saga was 950+ pages: John Sayles's A Moment in the Sun. (Yes, the indie filmmaker also writes good books. His first, Pride of the Bimbos, is about a traveling circus baseball team that plays in drag and stars a midget. Believe it.) A Moment in the Sun is set shortly before the end of the 1800s and reminded me of E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime in the mix of real and fictional characters, the scope of its story, themes and connections between seemingly disparate characters. Reamde sounds like another big feast we'd enjoy.

In August, we're going to the lake. I want to take a genre bender, Quantum Thief by Finnish author Hannu Rajaniemi. Publishers Weekly says that "Rajaniemi melds a caper novel, New Wave aesthetics, and theoretical physics into a stellar debut. Broken out of a quantum prison in which he'd been forced to play endless games of prisoner's dilemma, often against himself, master thief Jean le Flambeur is forced to take a job working for the mysterious and beautiful Mieli. They travel to Oubliette, a moving city on Mars where time and memory are quantifiable and transferrable goods, and privacy is paramount." Whew. I like traveling to other places from my beach towel and Mars would be a trip.

My husband's choice for our August vacation? Adam Brent Houghtaling's This Will End in Tears: The Miserabilist Guide to Music. It's due to be published on August 7. It's a comprehensive tour through sad music of all kinds. Doesn't that sound like fun? As an antidote I'm going to pack our most cheerful CDs.

I'm copying a page from Sister Mary's playbook and taking some classic English mysteries. If they're set at the seashore or the characters are on vacation, that's a plus. One example I've already read is P. M. Hubbard's High Tide. It features a man, Curtis, just released from prison where he was serving a sentence for manslaughter. Curtis is taking a trip when he's waylaid and asked about his victim's last words. He doesn't remember then, but later he does. They were: "High tide at ___." Curtis wonders if this means something that may be to his advantage, so he investigates––and so, unfortunately, do some villains. Beautiful coastal cliffs of Devon setting. Hubbard writes books that stick in the mind like sand in your wet swimming suit.

Another classic English mystery for vacation reading is Suicide Excepted, by Cyril Hare. Every year, an elderly Englishman makes the same trek that ends in the same room in the same hotel. One year, his vacation ends with his death in the same hotel bed. The police and coroner rule it a suicide. His children initiate their own amateur investigation when the insurance company refuses to pay on his policy. A drunken private eye and Inspector Mallett are also on hand. Like all of Hare's books, it's a little dry but very wonderful––like a martini.

I've taken P. G. Wodehouse to the lake in the past, and enjoyed the company of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster by the water. Robert Barnard and Carl Hiaasen are good, too. I like reading James Swain books about gambling during the day. His Mr. Lucky is Ricky Smith, who wins half a million at a casino in Las Vegas, scratches a winning lottery card, successfully bets long shots in a horse race at Belmont Park, and wins a vacation when ping pong balls are drawn out of a hat at a local celebration. The Las Vegas casino finds it impossible to believe in luck of this magnitude and hires Tony Valentine, an expert at detecting gambling fraud, to investigate. It's unfortunate that Valentine can't improve my poker when we play with friends in the cabin at night. You could call me Ms. Unlucky with a deck of cards.

Have you ever struck it lucky with some books you've taken to the beach? If so, we're all eyes and ears.