Menacing Groves

Sherwood's Celia Grant mysteries, launched in Flowers of Evil , always offer the extra bonus of delightful garden lore as accompaniment to the charms of the spunky, sprightly heroine. In her fifth adventure, Celia is on a tour of Italian gardens with a group that includes ``Mr. & Mrs. Hanson'' of South Africa. At home in Sussex, she had known the couple as the Vincents, desperately poor and incompetent actors in a repertory company. Now they affect wealth and horticultural knowledge, so Celia pretends she doesn't recognize the pair, all the while keeping an eye on them. Events reach a dizzying height when another couple in the tour group are fatally shot and the fake Hansons vanish. There continue many inspired plot twists, with Celia following each in her ingenious fashion, right up to the unpredictable finish. Sherwood's witty entertainment is garnished with descriptions of romantic Italian edens and of the eccentrics among Celia's traveling companions. (Jan.)