Gardening Can Be Murder.

This fun and captivating book takes a look at the surprising influence that gardens and gardening have had on mystery novels and their authors.
With their deadly plants, sharp scissors, shadowy corners, and ready-made burial sites, gardens make a fitting stage for the perfect murder. But the outsized influence that gardens and gardening have had on the mystery genre has been underestimated. Now, Marta McDowell, a writer and gardener with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, illuminates the many ways 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 cozy to hardboiled, literary to pulp, and classic to contemporary, Gardening Can Be Murder is the first book to explore the mystery genre's many surprising horticultural connections. Meet plant-obsessed detectives and creepy groundskeeper suspects, witness toxic teas served in foul play, and visit the gardens, both real and imagined, that have been the setting for fiction's most horrific misdeeds. A New York Times bestselling author, McDowell also introduces us to some of today's best writers who consider gardening an integral part of their craft, ensuring that horticultural themes will remain a staple of the genre for countless twisted plots to come.

This book is dangerous. A veritable cornucopia of detective fiction and gardening lore, it confronts the reader with multiple temptations: books to seek out, plants to obtain, garden tours to book. —Vicki Lane, author of The Elizabeth Goodweather Mysteries of the Appalachians.