Flowers of Evil: A Celia Grant Mystery

Celia Grant is a botanist, a petite widow from Sussex with white hair, porcelain-like skin and formidable brain-power whose last adventure was chronicled in The Mantrap Garden. Here she's drawn into the personal and business-related problems of Richard Galliant, a stylish fabric designer whose recent unpredictable behavior is inhibiting his family's move up the social ladder. Hired to instantaneously rehabilitate the neglected gardens of the Galliant country home, Celia discovers that it's not drink behind the handsome executive's odd actionsthe latest of which was bussing the Princess of Wales at a local dedicationbut a rare tropical plant with hallucinogenic properties. Celia and her handsome young manager, whose girlfriend works for the designer, sift through the Galliant entourage for both motive and perpetrator. Suspects abound: the no-account son and his rock-star friend; Galliant's talented but weak-willed daughter; his ambitious wife; his opera-star mistress and her Central American husband. After additional poisonings, two murders and a shoot-out in which Celia herself is hit, the tag-ends are tied up at a benefit performance of Figaro. Sprinkled with botanical and operatic tidbits, this light-hearted English country mystery delivers on its engaging promise. (February)