GREEN TRIGGER FINGERS

Youngish widow Celia Grant runs a nursery and garden-maintenance service in the gossipy town of Westfield Village--where the latest chatter has been centered on the murder of the Emersons, a London couple with a weekend cottage. The villagers, in fact, have already settled on a likely culprit: Kenny Cooper, semiliterate son of storekeeper Ethel. But then, digging on the grounds of aged Lady Nancy Armitage's estate, Cella discovers a body that seems to be Kenny's. . . only to find the body vanished when she returns with the skeptical police! Is Cella deluded? Or is something fishy going on amongst the Armitages? After all, Lady A.--expert flower painter, widow of a famed horticulturist--is looked after by her half-mad daughter Allison; furthermore, married son Ray (also something of a flake) is having a torrid affair with Celia's assistant Deirdre. . . who now suddenly disappears. So, while the village buzzes with talk of Cella's mental disarray, she does some sharp sleuthing--to locate the vagrant corpse, establish its identity, and pinpoint the Emersons' killer. Despite a weak motive for all the mayhem: a fresh, quirky diversion from the author of the uneven Death at the BBC (1983)--with a delightful heroine, a juicy supporting cast, and heaps of esoteric information for flower-and/or-art lovers.