The Alcatraz Rose: A Lawrence Kingston Mystery

Cozy fans will enjoy Eglin’s sixth mystery featuring British botany professor Lawrence Kingston (after 2011’s Garden of Secrets Past), despite some improbable plot developments. Kingston has garnered a reputation as a successful amateur sleuth with an eye for the telling detail (he cracked one case by noticing a wire coat hanger the police overlooked). His notoriety leads a 13-year-old girl, Letty McGuire, to ask him to find out what happened to her mother, who went missing eight years earlier. Kingston tells her not to expect much, but does pull strings to meet the investigating officer on the case. Meanwhile, he learns that a rare type of rose, believed extinct for half a century, has surfaced on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. This discovery proves to be connected to an English murder and sends the botanist to visit the site of the legendary prison. Eventually, he finds some answers for Letty. Assured prose helps compensate for a few clunkers (a police officer asserts that “proof is a rare thing in police work”). [em](BookLife) [/em]