THE LIFELINE

Murder disrupts a gardening group.

Ever since the murder of her imperious mother, Lady Swynford, Ruth Harvey has tried to make Frog End Manor a more welcoming place to the locals. She expands the annual summer fête with a host of child-friendly activities and opens her greenhouse to the public, selling indigenous plants to all comers at a modest price. And when her physician husband, Tom, recognizes that sometimes hard work and socialization can be more therapeutic than pills, Ruth even invites some of his needier patients to volunteer in her garden, potting seedlings, deadheading roses, and, most importantly, getting out of their empty houses to spend time with others. The bond she forged with Jacob, her reclusive landscaper, has given Ruth experience dealing with the mentally fragile. Now her kindness and persistence, along with the exercise of pruning, help Lawrence Deacon recover from a stroke. Widowed Tanya Carberry finds the world a less lonely place when she can help customers select plants. Even Johnny Turner, paralyzed as a teenager in a motorcycle crash, is a little less surly toward his mum when he learns to keep Ruth’s seedlings healthy and well watered. But the discovery of a body in the greenhouse threatens to undo all the gains her amateur gardeners have made. Worse yet, Inspector Squibb has decided that Jacob must be the killer. In desperation, Ruth turns to the Colonel, Frog End’s unofficial sleuth. With the help of his drinking buddy Naomi Grimshaw, ever vigilant Freda Butler, and Freda’s swastika-embellished war-souvenir binoculars, the Colonel cracks the case.

Crime and clues enhance this village charmer.