What's the thing that people shout at movie screens while watching horror movies? Maybe "don't go in the basement!"? We might want to add the garden to that list, because a fair number of murder mysteries involve people meeting their demise from some harmless-looking flower growing nearby.
Marta McDowell, who is both a writer and a gardener, has explored literary gardens in several books now. She adds to the pile with a work on the death-and-gardening theme, Gardening Can Be Murder: How Poisonous Poppies, Sinister Shovels, and Grim Gardens Have Inspired Mystery Writers. We could not resist a chance to talk about the subject matter of the book with the author, on Halloween Day itself.