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Geoff Nicholson: The Knot Garden

Richard Wisden, who has a gardening programme on the television, has, apparently committed suicide in a London hotel room. However, according to his wife, Libby, he should have been making a knot garden in Derbyshire. Libby is convinced that it was not suicide but that he was murdered. So she hires the house detective in the hotel where he died, her local doctor, and a not very successful literary critic to investigate. These and others set out to find out what happened, what led Wisden to the London hotel and why, in particular, he was not at Woodbine Cottage making the knot garden. Sexual kinkiness involving the respectable classes, strange conspiracies and, in this book, gardens and all that they entail gradually lead us to the conclusion which, of course, is to be found in the knot garden. A fun mystery but not one of his best books.

Publishing history

First published 1989 by Hodder and Stoughton