{"id":482,"date":"2012-08-09T15:07:08","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T23:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=482"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:32","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:32","slug":"book-review-the-lost-gardens-by-anthony-eglin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/book-review-the-lost-gardens-by-anthony-eglin\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review–The Lost Gardens by Anthony Eglin"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a fair amount of garden-themed mystery fiction.\u00a0 Some of the books are well written; the vast majority are not.\u00a0 I have just finished The Lost Gardens<\/em> by Anthony Eglin, a book that combines good writing, a strong sense of place, a knowledge of horticulture and an appealing sleuth.\u00a0 Eglin is no P.D. James or Louise Penny, but his horticultural whodunit is a compelling read.<\/p>\n

Lawrence Kingston, Eglin’s English sleuth, is a retired botany professor who loves wine, interesting women and his sporty Triumph TR4.\u00a0 The lost gardens of the title are at Wickersham Priory, a long-neglected estate recently inherited by a young American woman.\u00a0 The American, Jamie Gibson, has also inherited a sizable fortune, part of which she uses to hire Kingston to lead the restoration effort that will return the Wickersham gardens to their former splendor.\u00a0 The restoration begins with a surprise, which, of course, begets other surprises and leads to several murders.\u00a0 Kingston pursues sleuthing and restoration simultaneously.<\/p>\n

The descriptions of the restoration made me want to go out and find my own lost garden and rescue it from bramble-driven decay. I pined for Wickersham’s walled kitchen garden; the rolled, terraced lawns and–especially–the reconstituted rose garden.\u00a0 I could see them all in my mind’s eye and feel that enormous inheritance jingling in my pockets. Eglin mentions the real-life restoration of the “lost” gardens of Heligan in Cornwall in both the text and the acknowledgements.\u00a0 I have made a note to myself to re-read Tim Smit’s The Lost Gardens of Heligan<\/em> sometime soon to wallow once again in that inspiring act of garden resurrection.<\/p>\n

As is often the case with murder mysteries, the author and his sleuth seem to have more than a little in common.\u00a0 Both are handsome, garden-loving middle-aged men, born in England.\u00a0 Eglin migrated to the California wine country, while Lawrence Kingston stayed home in Great Britain.\u00a0 In The Lost Gardens<\/em>, Eglin tips his hat to his American domicile by making his heiress a California-born wine maker.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow it is supposed to rain, making garden work problematic.\u00a0 I am not disappointed.\u00a0 If the deluge comes, it will give me a chance to read more of Anthony Eglin’s English Garden mysteries.<\/p>\n

For more information on Anthony Eglin and his mysteries, go to http:\/\/anthonyeglin.com.\u00a0 To find out more about Heligan, go to http:\/\/www.heligan.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a fair amount of garden-themed mystery fiction.\u00a0 Some of the books are well written; the vast majority are not.\u00a0 I have just finished The Lost Gardens by Anthony Eglin, a book that combines good writing, a strong sense of place, a knowledge of horticulture and an appealing sleuth.\u00a0 Eglin is no P.D. James … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[168,169,173,172,171,170],"class_list":["post-482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","tag-anthony-eglin","tag-english-garden-mysteries","tag-garden-fiction","tag-garden-mysteries","tag-heligan","tag-the-lost-gardens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":483,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions\/483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}