MULCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Only Mother Nature knows why minivan queens Jane Jeffry and Shelley Nowack (A Groom with a View, 1999, etc.) decided to take the horticulture class offered by the local community center. The expert botanist scheduled to teach the course, beautiful and accomplished Dr. Julie Jackson, is in the hospital in a coma after being cold-conked by an unknown assailant in her basement office. Self-serving Dr. Stewart Eastman, her replacement, is a total drag who prattles pompously and cluelessly about the asexual reproduction of marigolds. Their classmates are a bunch of weirdos, and their interest in gardening is close to zilch. (When the class comes to inspect their landscaping, they rent pots of flowers from the local nursery instead of actually planting anything.) Maybe Jane needs something to distract her from the ankle she broke falling off the curb in front of Julie Jackson’s house. Or from her daughter’s teenage mood swings. Or from her son’s infatuation with a pink-haired sociopath. But even a steady stream of Cheez-its, served to her by the assiduous Shelley as she lounges in her favorite recliner, can’t lift Jane out of her doldrums. It would take a nice juicy murder—say, Dr. Eastman’s—to renew her sense of purpose, and at long, long last, over the objections of her boyfriend, Detective Mel VanDyne, that’s what she gets to dig into.

Yet another tale of people with too much time on their hands, most likely to interest people with too much time on their hands.