Supper Sleuths
Supper SleuthsWhile rare poison from plants has always been a method of murder, the garden has mostly been used as a setting in mystery novels where characters trip over bodies in the roses or where the sleuth finds footprints in the pansies as evidence. Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple was an avid gardener, and Rex Stout’s Nero Wolf nursed his exotic orchids but the garden had little do with the plot or the actual murder until Ellis Peter’s Brother Cadfael series began in 1977 when the medieval gardener and herbalist made his first appearance in print. In the 1980s, many cozy mystery writers began to create mysteries around specialized themes like cooking and gardening. These mystery authors use the specialized knowledge of their sleuth as an integral part of how he/she solved his/her cases and his/her specific expertise helps him/her solve the crime.John Sherwood began the Gardening sub genre with his Celia Grant series in 1984, and now there are many writers who have planted their own seeds of intrigue and watched them grow.
Credit for background & titles is due to NoveList: (Jacobs Merle, These Murderous Plants, http://novelst4.epnet.com 1/25/05); Reader's Advice.com's Gardening Mysteries; Des Plaines (IL) Public Library's Garden Variety Murder Mysteries; St. Charles (IL) Public Library's Digging for Clues: Mysteries in the Garden & Rooting Out Evil: Finding Mystery in the Garden; Skokie (IL) Public Library's Gruesome Gardens compiled by Ricki Nordmeyer, and Omaha (NE) Public Library's Mysterious Gardens. A very special thank you to Nanci Milone Hill for her title and compiling her last Supper Sleuths list.
The following is a list of titles by author. Whenever possible, the series is in order of publication date. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and please let us know if you feel that a title should be here. Please read one or more titles, and come prepared to discuss your impressions of them with the group.