Maybe you're killing your plants, but are your plants trying to kill you?

Prepare for house plant homicide in this week's show.

As I talk with Marta McDowell about her new book,

Gardening is Murder.

I thought for Halloween week we'd go a little bit off-piece.

To find out how mystery writers have been inspired by plants and gardens.

Whether you are a Halloween enthusiast or naysayer, it matters not. This episode is a fun, a diversion from normal life.

To take a look at the wonderful genre of the mystery novel, also known as crime fiction or

murder mysteries, and how they relate to gardens, plants and planty people. And there's no

better person to talk about that than

Martin McDowell, whose other works include Beatrix Potter's gardening life and all the

president's gardens. So settle down with a small glass of sherry beside a roaring fire, and enjoy our chat.

I'm Marta McDowell. I'm a writer, and I teach landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden.

Gardening Can Be Murder, great title for this spooky week of Halloween. Tell me about where this all began.

So I think that the light bulb turned on with a little paperback book I picked up in the, I'm going to say, late 1990s.

It was called Maltch, and it was by a garden journalist named Anne Ripley. I don't think

Anne's with us anymore, but she was from Colorado. And her protagonist was a garden writer, not

surprisingly. And it was a horticultural mystery.

It takes place in Washington, D.C.

It had a lot of different components.

And it was then I thought, oh, wait a minute, this might be a topic I could write about.

And I did write an article for a wonderful little garden journal called Hortus.

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