It’s said writers should write about what they know, and author Marta McDowell, an avid green-thumber who worked for years as a horticulturist, is touring Iowa this week, promoting her latest book.
“‘Gardening Can Be Murder’ puts two things together that I absolutely love and that is reading murder mysteries and gardening,” McDowell says, “so it is a round-up and exploration of horticultural themes in crime fiction and it was a lot of fun to write.”
McDowell says gardens are typically considered places of respite and relaxation, but she started noticing a darker theme in literature, dating all the way back to the Biblical Garden of Eden. “We think about gardens being Edenic and like paradise, but then I like to remember,” she laughs, “there’s a snake in the garden, too, that first garden.”
Famed writers like Edgar Allen Poe and Agatha Christie found inspiration in juxtaposing death in a place where plants come to life. As a girl, McDowell says she read a Nancy Drew book, “The Password to Larkspur Lane,” which featured the young sleuth as a gardener. Plus, plenty of modern best-sellers are set in or around gardens.
“It’s certainly not every murder mystery you pick up, but there are really a solid number of them that explore gardening or plants in various ways,” McDowell says, “plants as murder weapons, plants or gardens as the setting, maybe the detective is a gardener, sometimes the gardener is the suspect.”
During her four appearances this week, McDowell says she looks forward to hearing about what -else- Iowans are reading.
“I like to do a little talk, get people engaged, and then talk to them about their questions and also in this case, mysteries that they like,” McDowell says. “I always find more and I’m building up a nice list on my website, starting with the list that I use from the book of gardening-related murder mysteries.”
After an appearance at a gardening club in the Quad Cities on Tuesday, McDowell will be at the Iowa City Book Festival today, with stops tomorrow at the Clive Public Library, and in Ames for an ISU Lecture Series presentation at — where else? — Reiman Gardens.