Anne Underwood Grant: Cuttings

Dell Books (Paperback), ISBN 0-440-22553-1

If you want to kill someone, make sure a coffin is handy — and a few calla lillies too. Better yet, try a florist’s convention with more than enough flowers for a grave or two.

Anne Underwood Grant proves the worth of this observation in her latest Sydney Teague mystery, the aptly named Cuttings. At a huge Charlotte, N.C., flower show, a killer decides to say it with flowers and precedes each murder with the delivery of an ornate bouquet.

Sydney, ad agent and convention organizer, worries when she receives duplicates of the same murder-portending bouquets. She wants to hide when Tom Thurgood, police detective and very good friend, discovers that one final bouquet remains to be delivered — a bouquet addressed to her.

Knowing that the killer could be working beside her makes Sydney’s struggle to protect herself and her children whilst managing the show that much more difficult. But who is it? Could the killer be the transvestite gay bee with more than a wicked sting, the red-faced elusive ladybug or the gay-hating, chronic alcoholic?

Grant spins a tense and unforgettable tale that builds to a wonderfully chilling end. As the truth finally bloomed, Cuttings gave me one of my most frightening moments in a non-horror fiction. Definitely one of the year’s best.

Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith divides his talents between Webmastering, fiction writing and house keeping. Currently possessed by the Demon Comedic Muse, he is writing a comic fantasy entitled, Huw’s the Hero, an urban fantasy, vampire detective novel, Valencius Covers his Tracks. His science fiction romance Cyberius III was published in December 2005 by New Concepts Publishing under the pseudonym of S.J. Willing and he is working on the sequel, Poseidon VII. More information can be found at his normal website and at S.J. Willing’s webpage.