With their deadly plants, razor-sharp shears, shady corners, and ready-made burial sites, gardens make an ideal scene for a murder mystery. Flora and horticulture have had an outsize influence on the genre: motive, means, opportunity, victims, villains, and detectives. Join Marta McDowell, a writer, gardener, and avid mystery reader, in exploring the many ways in which writers—from Edgar Allen Poe and Wilkie Collins to Agatha Christie and some of today’s top crime fiction authors—have found inspiration in the sinister side of gardening.

This fun, engrossing book takes a look at the surprising influence that gardens and gardening have had on mystery novels and their authors. With their deadly plants, razor-sharp shears, shady corners, and ready-made burial sites, gardens make an ideal scene for the perfect murder. But the outsize influence that gardens and gardening have had on the mystery genre has been underappreciated. Now, Marta McDowell, a writer and gardener with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, illuminates the many ways in which our greatest mystery writers, from Edgar Allen Poe to authors on today’s bestseller lists, have found inspiration in the sinister side of gardens.

From the cozy to the hardboiled, the literary to the pulp, and the classic to the contemporary, Gardening Can Be Murder is the first book to explore the mystery genre’s many surprising horticultural connections. Meet plant-obsessed detectives and spooky groundskeeper suspects, witness toxic teas served in foul play, and tour the gardens—both real and imagined—that have been the settings for fiction’s ghastliest misdeeds. A New York Times bestselling author herself, McDowell also introduces us to some of today’s top writers who consider gardening integral to their craft, assuring that horticultural themes will remain a staple of the genre for countless twisting plots to come.   “This book is dangerous. A veritable cornucopia of crime fiction and gardening lore, it faces the reader with multiple temptations—books to seek out, plants to obtain, garden tours to book.” —Vicki Lane, author of the Elizabeth Goodweather Appalachian Mysteries.

Registration required–via Clive Public Library. Cosponsored by The Culture Buzz and the Des Moines Founders Garden Club.  For more information, please contact Teri at tnelson@cityofclive.com or call 515-453-2221.

Books will be available for signing and purchase from Beaverdale Books.

About the Author

 Marta McDowell lives, gardens and writes in Chatham, New Jersey where she shares her garden with her husband, Kirke, assorted wildlife and approximately 10,000 honeybees. You will often find her at the New York Botanical Garden, where she teaches landscape history and gardening courses. When she’s not gardening, she likes to read and knit and cook and eat, though not all at the same time.
Her husband, Kirke, summarized her biography as “I am therefore I dig.”