the plot thickens
After Maggie Walker’s complicated marriage ended, she needed a new start. She sold her condo and moved back to the Berkshires, buying her grandmother’s house. She had grown up there as a kid, helping her grandmother with the gardens. Her grandmother had lived into her 90s, so the upkeep on the house and gardens had slid some in her later years, and Maggie wants to restore them.
In addition to that, she’s going to be helping Violet Bloom with the Marlowe Community Garden. Violet had found a location, set it up, and gotten Marlowe citizens to sign up for the plots. It was an opportunity for those without a yard to set up a small garden, and Maggie had volunteered her time to help with it. Since she trained as a master gardener, she is happy to put her skills to work in the Community Garden.
But the morning they’re supposed to get started, Violet is missing. She’d left a note at Maggie’s, saying she’d be a little late, so Maggie waited as long as the other gardeners would let her before opening the Community Garden for the first time. She feels bad. Since Violet had put in so much work, Maggie knew she’d want to be there for the first day. But Maggie couldn’t keep the others waiting, so she finally opened the gate and welcomed the gardeners in.
Roy Hansen had signed up for three plots, but as soon as he gets started, he’s calling out to Maggie. The plots were all supposed to have been carefully tilled the day before, but his plot has a work boot sticking up from it. Maggie tries to pull the boot up from the soil for him, and finds that there is a foot inside. Someone had used their brand-new community garden to try to hide a dead body.
The police are called and the Community Garden is put on hold for the investigation. Maggie tries to call Violet, but she can’t get ahold of her. Her childhood friend Sally Kendall shows up to help Maggie process the shock, and the women start to ask questions. And when they find out that the man buried in the Community Garden was Carl Henderson, Maggie is shocked. Carl is known around town for coming up with money-making schemes, and his latest was a large real estate development that would include luxury condos and abut the woods out back of Maggie’s house.
Ever since Maggie had bought her grandmother’s house, Carl had been trying to get her to sell it to him. Maggie had rolled her eyes and told him that she wasn’t interested in selling. But when he turned up dead, Maggie wondered if he had been trying to buy her neighbors’ houses as well for his Marlowe Estates. But as she starts asking questions, the police come after her and tell her to stay out of the investigation. But she just can’t. Maggie feels like she owes it to Violet, who is still missing, to find out what happened in the Community Garden.
As Maggie and Sally try to keep investigating on the sly, Maggie also has to deal with an old high school bully, an ex-boyfriend who is now the sheriff, and an annoying cousin who insists he’s entitled to more money from her grandmother’s estate. But all of that barely matters in light of Violet’s disappearance. Did she see something that she shouldn’t have? Is she hiding from danger? Or did something worse happen to her?
The Gardener’s Plot is a a debut novel from Deborah Benoit. It’s a slower moving mystery for readers looking for a calming small town mystery with some gardening tips. It has an old-fashioned feel to it, like it was written decades ago, but with modern twists.
I listened to the audio book for The Gardener’s Plot, narrated by Patricia Santomasso. I thought the narration was good, but it was a little slow in places. That fits with the old-fashioned feel to the mystery, but I did speed up the audio book for a while, to help with my impatience.
I liked this book, but not as much as I wanted to. I thought it had a strong premise, but it could use some tightening up in the storytelling. For example, it took a really long time to find out who it was that Maggie had found in the Community Garden. But keeping in mind that this is Benoit’s first book and a winner in the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel, The Gardener’s Plot could grow into a really solid series.
Egalleys for The Gardener’s Plot were provided by Minotaur Books, and a copy of the audio book was provided by Dreamscape Media, both through NetGalley, with many thanks.
