Favorite Mysteries with Plants and Gardens a.k.a. Gardening Can Be Murder

by Marta McDowell
|
9 books
Love crime fiction and gardening? Me too. Nothing like settling down to a good mystery after a long day of digging in the dirt. Here are some of my picks from classic to contemporary.
Read more... Read less...

Thyme of Death

Susan Wittig Albert, 2004
The debut of Susan Wittig Albert’s justifiably long-running series featuring defense attorney-turned-herbalist China Bayles. If you enjoy the wit and suspense of this mystery, try Albert’s Darling Dahlia series too, featuring a small-town garden club during the Great Depression.

The Murder at the Vicarage

A Miss Marple Mystery
Agatha Christie, 2009
I had to include Agatha Christie and my favorite gardener-sleuth of all time. The Murder at the Vicarage is the first novel-length appearance of Miss Jane Marple in her fictional village of St. Mary Mead. We see her in her garden adjacent to the vicarage where the murder takes place. With this 1930 book, Christie set the standard for the amateur sleuth and the British village mystery still standard in crime fiction today.

Gasa-Gasa Girl

Naomi Hirahara, 2008
I love Hirahara’s writing because she imbues her mysteries with historical factions. (Thank you, Amy Stewart, for recommending her.) As with all of Hirahara’s books, I found this one with the plot riveting and the characters compelling. In Gasa-Gasa Girl, you will find the added bonus of the real tale of the Japanese garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

The Lost Garden: A Novel

Helen Humphreys, 2003
Helen Humphreys is a Canadian poet, and the language of this book provides solid evidence. The setting is an English estate garden during World War II and features members of the Women’s Land Army as its cast of characters. With a gardener as the protagonist, Humphreys portrays time and emotion, life and death, love and loss through overgrown garden slowly revealing its secrets.

Death in the Garden

Elizabeth Ironside, 2017
An English garden in two time periods, present and flashback, is both scene of the murder and the passion of a principal suspect. This is a well-written and well-constructed murder mystery. It saddens me that Ironside, alias Lady Catherine Manning, hasn’t followed up with another mystery.

Deacon King Kong

Barack Obama Favourite Read & Oprah's Book Club Pick
James McBride, 2020
If you like a novel with amazing characters, dialog, and humor, read this. McBride opens the book with a shooting. The unlikely identity of the shooter is revealed up front. One mystery (of several) is the motive. A novel that combines plants, a dream garden, and a puzzle that slowly clicks into place.

The Last Devil to Die

A Thursday Murder Club Mystery
Richard Osman, 2023
At the time of this list (2024), this is the fourth and latest in Osman’s spectacular Thursday Murder Club series and the one that fits with this list. If I say more, it will be a spoiler. I was sorry to get to the end of the book, and I hope Richard Osman decides to return to this series soon.

Busman's Honeymoon

Dorothy L. Sayers, 2012
If you haven’t read a Lord Peter Wimsey-Harriet Vane mystery, or you haven’t read one in a while, you’re in for a treat. If the butler didn’t do it, perhaps the gardener did…

The Turn of the Key

Ruth Ware, 2020
A page turner. Do not use this book as bedtime reading unless you want to stay awake all night. It is a mystery-thriller with more than a touch of gothic, poison garden included. Because of that garden, I guessed this book was inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” Not so, answered Ruth Ware in an email. For her, the inspiration was the Henry James novella, The Turn of the Screw.