Read for the 2010 TBR Lite Reading Challenge.
Jamie Gibson, a young California winemaker, inherits a English manor, and decides to move to England. Wickersham Priory once had grand gardens, and she hires garden expert Lawrence Kingston to help her rebuild them.
Lawrence begins to investigate the history of Wickersham, as well as the former owner, Major Ryder, curious as to why he would leave the property to a seemingly random American girl. Before long, as he turns up information about the priory and Major Ryder, strange things start to happen.
This is a perfectly serviceable mystery, but has quite a bit of too much gardening detail thrown in. It’s like a big garden fan wrote a mystery to try to lure non-gardeners in, and then threw in as many English garden details as he possibly could. I can’t say the book’s bad exactly, but it gets a bit old after a while.