Crooked Lane Books
Featuring: Saffron Everleigh; Dr. Michael Lee
ISBN: 1639102787 EAN: 9781639102785 Kindle: B0BDCGVK5N Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
The second fascinating Saffron Everleigh Mystery finds the lady botanist working hard at her research at the University College of London. While she just wants to make a name for herself in the plant world, she’s becoming an expert in A BOTANIST’S GUIDE TO FLOWERS AND FATALITY.
The tribulations of a young woman in a 1920s college full of overbearing, insecure men, are many. Some suspect her of flirting when all she is doing is answering a query or writing a letter. Others ask her to fetch the tea. Dr. Michael Lee, assigned to share an office with Saffron, is a more broadminded young man, but he still feels responsible for seeing she doesn’t get harmed on some escapade. The pair of them respond to accidental cases of poisoning or contact with toxic plants, to identify the toxic botany near the occurrence. Good warnings!
Detective Inspector Green, who found Saffron useful in the past, requires her skills once more. Anonymously sent bouquets containing poisonous or contact-toxic flowers have been found at the scenes of a couple of murders. When the count reaches three, he understands that this is a genuine connection. The term serial killer was not yet in use, but this is a sequence of murders, in which all the victims so far are female. While at first the plants are just a curiosity and a chance for Saffron to exercise her knowledge, she soon gets more deeply involved.
Saffron has a wider spread of experiences than in her first adventure, A BOTANIST'S GUIDE TO PARTIES AND POISON. The parties still occur, but this time in jazz clubs or similar gatherings of bright young things, because the victims frequented these occasions. Their friends, mostly women, aren’t necessarily suspects, but Saffron tries to get them to talk. She uncovers a hotbed of illicit drug use, but is that enough to account for murders?
I enjoyed the early countryside case more than the party scene, but some readers will feel the opposite, and the basis of modern crimes and detection can be clearly seen. Author Kate Khavari shows different strata of society at that time in London. I’m still finding Americanisms occasionally; for instance, Saffron would not even be thinking of Jimson weed in the English meadow, but maybe she had been reading an American textbook. After all, she is closely following the progress of her good friend and colleague, Dr. Alexander Ashton, on a South American expedition. A BOTANIST’S GUIDE TO FLOWERS AND FATALITY advances a career and deals in murder most foul.
Brilliant botanist Saffron Everleigh is back and ready for adventure in Kate Khavari’s next mesmerizing historical mystery.
“A cleverly plotted puzzle” (Ashley Weaver) in the vein of Opium and Absinthe, this second installment is perfect for fans of Rhys Bowen and Sujata Massey.
1920s London isn’t the ideal place for a brilliant woman with lofty ambitions. But research assistant Saffron Everleigh is determined to beat the odds in a male-dominated field at the University College of London. Saffron embarks on her first research study alongside the insufferably charming Dr. Michael Lee, traveling the countryside with him in response to reports of poisonings. But when Detective Inspector Green is given a case with a set of unusual clues, he asks for Saffron’s assistance.
The victims, all women, received bouquets filled with poisonous flowers. Digging deeper, Saffron discovers that the bouquets may be more than just unpleasant flowers— there may be a hidden message within them, revealed through the use of the old Victorian practice of floriography. A dire message, indeed, as each woman who received the flowers has turned up dead.
Alongside Dr. Lee and her best friend, Elizabeth, Saffron trails a group of suspects through a dark jazz club, a lavish country estate, and a glittering theatre, delving deeper into a part of society she thought she’d left behind forever.
Will Saffron be able to catch the killer before they send their next bouquet, or will she find herself with fatal flowers of her own in Kate Khavari’s second intoxicating installment.
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