The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

The Darling Dahlias #1

by Susan Wittig Albert

The good old ladies of Darling, Alabama, are determined to keep their town beautiful. The Darling Dahlias garden club is off to a good start until rumors of trouble at a bank, an escaped convict, and a ghost digging around their tree surface. If anyone can get to the root of these mysteries, it's the Darling Dahlias.

Genres: Mystery, Cozy Mystery, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Cozy, Historical, Historical Mystery

304 pages, Hardcover

First published July 6, 2010

About the author

Susan is the author/co-author of biographical/historical fiction, mysteries, and nonfiction. Now in her 80s and continuing to write, she says that retirement is not (yet) an option. She publishes under her own imprint. Here are her latest books.

A PLAIN VANILLA MURDER, #27 in the long-running China Bayles/Pecan Springs series.

Two Pecan Springs novella trilogies: The Crystal Cave Trilogy (featuring Ruby Wilcox): noBODY, SomeBODY Else, and Out of BODY; and The Enterprise Trilogy (featuring Jessica Nelson): DEADLINES, FAULTLINES, and FIRELINES.

THE DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE POINSETTIA PUZZLE #8 in the Darling Dahlias series, set in the early 1930s in fictional Darling AL

THE GENERAL'S WOMEN. Kay, Mamie, and Ike--the wartime romance that won a war but could have derailed a presidency.

LOVING ELEANOR: A novel about the intimate 30-year friendship of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, based on their letters

A WILDER ROSE: the true story of Rose Wilder Lane, who transformed her mother from a farm wife and occasional writer to a literary icon

THE TALE OF CASTLE COTTAGE, #8 in the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter

DEATH ON THE LIZARD, the 12th and last (2006) of the Robin Paige series, by Susan and Bill Albert

TOGETHER, ALONE: A MEMOIR OF MARRIAGE AND PLACE

AN EXTRAORDINARY YEAR OF ORDINARY DAYS

WORK OF HER OWN: A WOMAN'S GUIDE TO RIGHT LIVELIHOOD

WRITING FROM LIFE: TELLING YOUR SOUL'S STORY

Reviews

[Margitte · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a delightful read. Entertaining, light, relaxing and informative with a wicket curl in the tail.

Loved it.

[Ginny Messina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Susan Wittig Albert. First, there is something rather endearing about her author photo; she's kind of unglamorous and apparently doesn’t give a hoot about it.

And second, she’s made me realize that I may, after all, be a person who likes “cozy mysteries.” I had no idea! I picked this up from my library’s new book shelf and brought it home--despite the fact that it’s a mystery-- because it takes place during the Depression and in a small southern town and involves ladies who garden. I didn’t really care about the mystery that much--I just liked the characters and the town. There is a slight flavor of “Fried Green Tomatoes” (with the subtly hinted-at lesbian couple who run the local café) and a little bit of a tease in that the protagonists spend some time in nearby Monroeville (home of Harper Lee, and of course, this book takes place in the same time period as TKAM.)

The website associated with this new series has a map of the town which was fun to look at, although I hope the publisher will consider printing the map right in the future books in this series. I can't believe it, non-mystery-reader that I am--but I'm looking forward to the next adventures of the Darling Dahlias.

[Joy Gerbode · Rating 5 out of 5]

VERY good read! I admit, in the beginning I thought "what a lot of gossip" ... but very quickly learned to laugh at all the gossip as it truly is just like that in small towns around the country. Each character is well developed, and well introduced so I feel I know them, though there are quite a few and it's hard to keep them straight. (I'm sure a few more books will remedy that!) I know people just like many of these ladies. The historic references to the Civil War, the depression, the run on the bank ... all very interesting. And all the flower information is very educational. Add all of that to an absolutely charming town (reminded me of all the great southern movies like Driving Miss Daisy and Sweet Magnolias), a fantastic murder plot with quite a few suspects, and an ending that was somewhat of a surprise ... and this quickly became one of the favorite cozies I have read! I'm eager to continue the series!

[Cornerofmadness · Rating 2 out of 5]

Usually I like Albert’s cozies but this one just didn’t do it for me. I hate giving up on books and I did this one. It’s not in my book count for the year. This was just so incredibly slow. I think some of it was intentional, to give it that slow southern feel. The basic plot, it’s 1930, the Dahlias, a gardening club, just got a house bequeathed to them (much to the consternation of the nephew who was expecting his aunt to give it to him). I figure he’ll end up dead or cause them problems or something but in over 50 pages nothing happened. It was all literally going from Dahlia to Dahlia, each woman getting her own chapter titled by her name and all you really got was their lives. Who does what? Who’s suffering from the depression etc.

In 50 pages Albert breaks the fourth wall to talk to the audience (she does this in all her books) which I hate but I could have handled that if something, anything, had happened or if these women were interesting in any way but they weren’t. Albert spends more time describing houses and gardens and trying to give it a small town feel. She literally spends whole paragraphs telling you who is related to whom and it all feels very extraneous. Maybe it isn’t but if nothing has happened several chapters in but more names and place setting, I have too many more interesting things to read. The second star in the rating is because it’s not badly written. It’s just not for me.

[Jayne Hullinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once again this author has pulled me into the story so much that I would love to have lived in Darling and joined the Garden Club. The time period for this series is perfect. The characters are robust and so true to the time period. Well done and I can’t wait to get the second book in this series. I do appreciate the recipes and tidbits that go along with this book!!

[Dawn Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

THIS was a very good read; I am so happy I "accidentally" got the 7th book in the series through NetGalley and now have to read all of the ones leading up to that one!!

There are quite a few characters, but many are just peripheral and you only have to really keep track of 4, which isn't too bad. Set in 1930 in the South, when everything was hard for everyone, this book shows the resilience that was America back then and how people kept it together in the face of adversity. And murder. Because a good cozy mystery wouldn't be just that without a good murder. Though this one is really sad in a way and I cannot say anymore because it would totally give it away.

I will say that the murderer surprised me and that the events leading up to the reveal kept me reading until late in the night. A very, very good read and I recommend these to anyone who loves Historical Fiction AND a good mystery.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dahlia garden club has decided to do their own sleuthing when their local femme fatale is found dead, of a presumed car crash. Each lady has their own niche to assist in their investigation and oh, the clues they do find. Seems the lady of (bad) luck is the Kevin Bacon of yore. But they get the results they sought and save a few perils in their doing so. So many goings on in this little town, set shortly after the end of slavery. The period vocabulary was fun to read, the customs and general way of life seem so simple then. The writing is a bit wordy, but the details were often fun to read.

Gives a Roster of characters to start you off and finishes with a list of household tips and recipes for some of the food items mentioned in the story.

[Sarah Nealy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 This was an excellent mystery. Plus the audio is great, really immerses you into the lives of women that lived in Alabama during the great depression. I really enjoyed this one! I will say pay careful attention to the characters because there are a lot of them, but you get used to who's who as it goes on.

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have loved this book had it not been for the profanity and inappropriate content at times. What a shame!

[Barbara Nutting · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful stroll down the garden path to 1930 - a small southern town, party lines, lots of gossip, and a murder!! These Darling Dahlia garden club members are a bunch of delightful characters. A bit of Miss Julia and a smidge of Miss Marple. I can hardly wait to read the rest of the series. This book left me with a big smile on my face, I just loved it 😊

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't read it for the mystery. Read it for the 1930s Alabama small town ambiance. The ladies of the Darling, AL gardening club, called the Dahlias, stand by each other in thick and thin. They find a murderer, an embezzler, an escaped convict, and someone who is just a darn fool. A handful of foods mentioned have recipes at the end. Anyone up for trying peanut butter meringue pie? My teeth ache just at the thought, but I'd give it a try.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweet Escape

If you like getting to meet new characters, like the historical time of the 1930’s, and love to see the good guys win, you’ll like this book. It’s a cozy mystery that takes place in a fictional town of Darling, AL. I fell in love with the strong , independent women and the town of Darling. There’s some recipes at the end of the book of the food that was mentioned throughout the story. I’m looking forward to trying one!

[Kyrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in a small town in Alabama in 1930, it centers around a garden club. There's an escaped convict, a young woman who died in a car crash, and the impending doom of bank collapses.

It hovered between two and three stars for me, just because I struggled to keep a large number of characters organized and because I really doubted some of the characters would have acted in such a modern way. Still it had moments and I'd read another in this series.

[Vickie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is my new favorite Susan Wittig Albert series! The series is set in 1930s Alabama and it feels real. I liked the characters, the dialogue, and the mysteries. Yep, there's more than one big mystery, rather there are several small ones to go with the main mystery. Definitely a good one to read or listen to. Can highly recommend it.

[Susan Tweit · Rating 5 out of 5]

This first book in Susan Albert's newest mystery series is a charming read, with well-drawn characters and beautiful sense of place and history. It's a great book to pick up when you want to immerse yourself in a small town and its era, and just enjoy the story unfolding. It's also quietly subversive. In sum: a real delight!

[Stacie Haden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steel Magnolias without the drama. :)

I love the Darling Dahlia's, the sense of time and place (Alabama 1930) and a good simpler times, southern cozy mystery. I'll continue with this series!

Ps. I also enjoy her other series, starting with "Death at Bishop's Keep" under the pseudonym Robin Paige (Victorian era mystery set in England)

[Oleta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked up my copy yesterday and read it last night. It is great love the darling dahlias, such a wide range of characters and a multi layered mysteries You did it again Susan. I am ready for the next one.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely love these Darling Dahlia Stories. I like to think back on times when life was simpler. In some respects that is. Putting the wash through the wringer and hanging it out to dry is not that appealing. But the stories are nice.

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kinda like if we got to see Mayberry from the perspective of Aunt Bea and all her friends rather than Opie and Andy Griffith and Barney Fife. Oh, and if there was violent crime and truly scandalous behavior.

[Bobbi Bullard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. It's charming in a good, old fashioned way. Everyone involved is genteel and sweet. I'll look up more of Albert's Dahlia books.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a delight to listen to in the car!

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I accidentally started out with one of the later books in this series, and enjoyed it, so I went back to the beginning (this one). And now, I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up going through the series. I like the author's other mystery series (China Bayles) and so I'm not really surprised to like this one too, although it is different in that it is a historical series, set in the thirties in Alabama. This is definitely a cozy, with several mysteries, but no really hard core murders. It's not one of those mysteries where you have no clue until the end. But it is a fun immersion in southern culture in the thirties.

[Amy Snipes · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree was an excellent cozy mystery, set in the south of Alabama in the 1930s. I can see a movie in my mind from the excellent writing and I sure would like to spend some time in Darling or with the Dahlias if they weren't fictious. Reminds me of the older women in Steel Magnolias if they were solving crime. I'm so glad this is a series because I'm looking forward to the next!

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 2010 the story takes place in the 1930’s. First in a long series by a prolific author I had never heard of until I started looking for books that had a garden club featured in the book. It’s a murder mystery too!! The author was one of the Nancy Drew ghost writers. Nice to have a new series to go through and lighter reading between other reads.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not for everyone but I enjoyed this glimpse of the old south and a ladies' garden club.

[Ghost in the Stacks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Guess it just wasn’t for me. Was quite bored through the book.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

It started out a bit slow but the characters were being introduced to us.

Then the storyline picked up.

It is a book set in the south during the Depression. So the storyline is a bit slower than some others but still enjoyable.

[Barbara Cromer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice easy read. Better than her "China Bayles" books.

[EuroHackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was trawling around the mystery section of the library, as one is wont to do, and I came across these books. The author, Susan Wittig Albert, has written a lot of books in a lot of different series, but what attracted me to these were the covers (and the clever titles).

I have to admit, I was a little hesitant. Set in Depression-era southern Alabama, with a huge warning in the front of the book for possibly offensive language when referring to the black characters, I nearly put it back. But after checking out the plot summaries of all the books, I decided to try the first one and see what I thought. After all, the interesting outweighed the potentially disastrous: lady detectives solving mysteries between meetings of the garden club in a small town, I was kinda getting Jessica Fletcher vibes, haha.

I'm glad I decided to give this one a chance, because it was a surprisingly gripping read. It was hard to get into - the cast of characters is large and somewhat confusing, before the main characters' personalities begin to emerge - but once the story got going, it was very good. There are 3 main characters, the officers of the Darling Dahlias: Lizzy Lacy, the president; Ophelia Snow, the vice president; and Verna Tidwell, the treasurer. They are quite vivacious in their own way, but are also down to earth. Lizzy is the secretary of the local lawyer, and Verna is the clerk in the probate office, while Ophelia is the wife of the mayor - so they all have connections, and count among their friends and fellow Dahlias the local banker's wife, the owner of the beauty salon, and the switchboard operator. It's a large and diverse group, but they pool their smarts and resources to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Bunny Scott is the local blonde bombshell, and when she turns up dead, all kinds of town secrets are brought to the fore. There are also secondary storylines involving an escaped convict from the prison farm, whispers that Ophelia's husband is having an affair with the beautiful young wife of his cousin, a romantic complication in Lizzy's life (for which she asks frank advice from the widowed Verna), trouble at the local bank, and a "ghost" haunting the Dahlias' clubhouse. All of the plots move along in parallel, and come to some rather surprising conclusions.

It was quite an enjoyable read, and there was no racist language. The black characters are "the help," but they are treated nicely, are paid fairly, and they live in their own quarters on the 'other' side of town - and they are the best source of goings-on around town, just beyond the 'party line' phone lines. They are referred to as 'colored' people, in keeping with the times - this is 1930, after all.

[Mary Ronan Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susan Wittig Albert is well-known for her cozy mystery series featuring China Bayles with titles such as Thyme of Death and Rosemary Remembered. She also writes a Victorian series with her husband, Bill Albert, under the pseudonym Robin Paige. If you are a cozy fan and have read any of these you will be delighted to know she has started a new series, taking place during the depression, in a fictional town in Alabama (probably based on Monroeville) called Darling, "which has 4 churches, 907 good Christian people (soon to be 908 because Mrs Perkins is expecting any day now), and only a few Bad Apples."

The Dahlias are a garden club named after their benefactor, Dahlia Blackstone, who has died and left to the club her house and the small remains of the estate her family held before the War Between the States, as the ladies of Darling refer to it. Darling is a sleepy town where everybody knows most everybody else and where nothing much happens.

However, this is 1930 and there are disturbing rumors about the solidity of the bank, made much worse when a bank examiner comes to town. There is money missing and one of the tellers, a garden club member, is accused of stealing it. The Dahlias strongly doubt the woman took the money. For one thing, what could she do with it without everyone in town knowing she was spending above her income.

When a young woman who has come to Darling from a local town to work in the drug store goes missing, the officers of the garden club decide to investigate. The sheriff tends to make up his mind first and then go looking for facts to back up his opinion and the Dahlias think he should be a tad more flexible.

Albert is a skilled and experienced author (she also writes the Beatrix Potter series) and she has a time and a place in depression-era Darling, Alabama, that is perfect for a cozy mystery. Easy reading, full of charm, and with just enough surprises to keep it interesting. Great escape reading.

2011 No 44 Coming soon: Bringing Adam Home