CREEPING JENNY

Yet another trip down the Miss Marple trail (her own phrase) for Celia Grant of Archerscroft Nurseries (The Hanging Garden, 1992, etc.). The mystery begins when Jenny Watson, Celia's timid new assistant, having revealed herself as ``a volcano of libidinous hang- ups overlaid with a mass of simpering affectation,'' is kidnapped by two men who had evidently put in an appearance at her last job, too. Egged on by her lovelorn head gardener, Bill Wilkins, Celia alertly links Jenny's disappearance to the Fighters of the Green Front and forestalls their all-natural terrorist attack on the Chelsea Flower Show. But stopping the Green meanies this time isn't enough: Celia's determined to find out who's behind them, and why—as she does, with considerable help from police forces high and low, in the more conventional, but still clever, sequel. A prologue compares the snubbing of a local absentee squire to the anger of Achilles—an ironic but apt figure for the hyperinflation of village minutiae in this most British puzzler.