The Savage Garden
by Mark Mills
Plot Outline
Cambridge 1958, and term is finishing. Adam Strickland is an adequate but lazy scholar, always working to the bare minimum. When his professor suggests Italy as the location for his thesis, he is initially under-whelmed, but realizes that complying with Professor Leonard’s suggestion may be expedient for his marks. He is to study the history of a Renaissance garden, hidden behind a Tuscan villa. “Maybe a garden isn’t quite what you had in mind, but don’t dismiss it…” Professor Crispin says. “Art and history coming together to create a whole new entity.” Adam is unconvinced, but agrees.
Adam is unprepared for the effect that the city of Florence, the Gina Lollobrigida-esque looks of the landlady at his pension, and above all the villa and garden itself will have on him. His hostess is an elderly widow battling to hang onto life, whose elder son died just as the Germans were retreating, when the family were congratulating themselves on having survived the occupation.
The Docci Family
Adam is enchanted by the villa, less so by the garden at first, but soon falls under its spell, and that of its owners, the Docci family. Adam quickly comes to realize that not only is the garden a memorial from sixteenth-century Frederico Docci to the memory of his wife, but also a confession as well; that he murdered her.
The story parallels that of a more recent killing. There are stories that Signora Docci’s eldest son was not murdered by the withdrawing Germans at all, and that the witnesses testimony is vague and contradictory. Adam becomes intrigued, especially since it allows him to get better acquainted with the Signora Docci’s beautiful grand-daughter.
But his main suspect has heard that he is asking questions, and Adam finds that Italian responses to awkward questions are more direct, and more brutal than those he is used to. Before long he finds himself hunted and running for his life through a hostile town.
Other Works by Mark Mills
Like his protagonist, Mark Mills is a Cambridge graduate, of 1986, since when he has written screenplays for films such as The Reckoning and an adaptation of Barry Unsworth’s Morality Play.
The Savage Garden is his second novel, following on from the success of his John Creasey Award-winning novel, The Whaleboat House (originally published as Amagansett).
The Savage Garden is initially slow and languorous, but like its setting, it is seductive and enchanting, and a must for any reader that likes their whodunits cerebral, unusual and redolent of Italy.
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