Death of a Garden Pest

Louise Eldridge is framed for murder when the environmental slant of her public television program alienates a number of key people

While recovering from wounds she suffered in Mulch, Louise Eldridge, gardener and wife of a CIA agent, is asked by the Northern Virginia public television station to help host an organic gardening show. Once she accepts, she discovers herself in a behind-the-media-scenes world of backbiting and jealousy. Despite the wholehearted support of the show's producer, Louise is upstaged by her cohost, John Batchelder, who keeps giving himself extra lines, while Madeleine Doering, whose place in the series Louise has taken, proves a vocal, ungracious competitor. When Madeleine dies from an injection of pesticide recently discussed on the show, Louise becomes prime suspect. As her family pitches in to help prove her innocence, they gradually realize that many?from the shallow co-host to the encouraging producer?had reason to want Madeleine dead. Ripley tells her gripping tale in engaging, down-to-earth prose, interjecting bits of gardening advice, as scripts for the show, throughout. In the end, Louise uses her horticultural knowledge to finger the killer and earns the respect of many, even that of the president.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ripley's upscale housewife heroine, recovering from injuries inflicted by a crazed Defense Department nominee (Mulch, 1994), returns for a second outing. This time, amateur detective and better-than-amateur organic gardener Louise Eldridge lifts up a family from low ebb--her husband the spy is facing a career crisis, her daughters are grappling with sex and social-consciousness issues--when she lands a PBS gardening-show gig. Predictably enough, the station itself is a compost heap of lust, jealousy, and sponsor pressures. Before Louise can get her soil turned and her reputation seeded, her predecessor, a discontented socialite who's been kicked upstairs to a geriatrics show, is poisoned by pesticide--a murder that occurs after an unlikely ladies' room catfight involving Louise herself. So Louise is a prime suspect, and her family and suburban D.C. neighbors, charmed by her ways with color-changing tulips, set out to save her good name--and her life--from a killer now targeting her. Ripley's domestic and professional scenes pull all the approved material from today's self-help shelves, and she's hampered by peremptory characterization, absent-minded prose (a ``sharp gulf between them''), and a leading lady who's soap- operatic in her suffering. On the up side, the gardening nonfiction--ten small and distinct chapters--is informative and fun. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ripley's follow-up to Mulch will tempt gardening buffs seeking a mystery enhanced by plenty of tantalizing garden details. The sequel finds intrepid organic gardener Louise Eldridge in receipt of an offer to host a public television program as a result of the publicity from her earlier capture of a murderer. But when the gardening show's environmental slant becomes apparent, a number of powerful people are alienated. Among the unhappy throng are Eldrige's handsome if shallow cohost; a chemical corporation czar who happens to be a potential donor; and the reigning arbiter of horticultural taste, recently deposed by the hiring of Eldridge. Before long, a murder at the station implicates Eldridge as the prime suspect, enmeshing her husband and daughter in a tense endeavor to find the true culprit. Readers drawn in by the "green" story line will not be disappointed as intrigue surrounding the murderer's identity unravels. Alice Joyce