Mystery
![Laurie R. King - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_laurie_r_king.jpg)
Back to the Garden: A Novel
A fifty-year-old cold case involving California royalty comes back to life-with potentially fatal consequences-in this gripping standalone novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series.
A magnificent house, vast formal gardens, a golden family that shaped California, and a colorful past filled with now-famous artists: the Gardener Estate was a twentieth-century Eden.
And now, just as the Estate is preparing to move into a new future, restoration work on some of its art digs up a grim relic of the home's past: a human skull, hidden away for decades.
Inspector Raquel Laing has her work cut out for her. Fifty years ago, the Estate's young heir, Rob Gardener, turned his palatial home into a counterculture commune of peace, love, and equality. But that was also a time when serial killers preyed on innocents-monsters like The Highwayman, whose case has just surged back into the public eye.
Could the skull belong to one of his victims?
To Raquel-a woman who knows all about colorful pasts-the bones clearly seem linked to The Highwayman. But as she dives into the Estate's archives to look for signs of his presence, what she unearths begins to take on a dark reality all of its own.
Everything she finds keeps bringing her back to Rob Gardener himself. While he might be a gray-haired recluse now, back then he was a troubled young Vietnam vet whose girlfriend vanished after a midsummer festival at the Estate.
But a lot of people seem to have disappeared from the Gardener Estate that summer when the commune mysteriously fell apart: a young woman, her child, and Rob's brother, Fort.
The pressure is on, and Raquel needs to solve this case-before The Highwayman slips away, or another Gardener vanishes.
A magnificent house, vast formal gardens, a golden family that shaped California, and a colorful past filled with now-famous artists: the Gardener Estate was a twentieth-century Eden.
And now, just as the Estate is preparing to move into a new future, restoration work on some of its art digs up a grim relic of the home's past: a human skull, hidden away for decades.
Inspector Raquel Laing has her work cut out for her. Fifty years ago, the Estate's young heir, Rob Gardener, turned his palatial home into a counterculture commune of peace, love, and equality. But that was also a time when serial killers preyed on innocents-monsters like The Highwayman, whose case has just surged back into the public eye.
Could the skull belong to one of his victims?
To Raquel-a woman who knows all about colorful pasts-the bones clearly seem linked to The Highwayman. But as she dives into the Estate's archives to look for signs of his presence, what she unearths begins to take on a dark reality all of its own.
Everything she finds keeps bringing her back to Rob Gardener himself. While he might be a gray-haired recluse now, back then he was a troubled young Vietnam vet whose girlfriend vanished after a midsummer festival at the Estate.
But a lot of people seem to have disappeared from the Gardener Estate that summer when the commune mysteriously fell apart: a young woman, her child, and Rob's brother, Fort.
The pressure is on, and Raquel needs to solve this case-before The Highwayman slips away, or another Gardener vanishes.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for the award-winning novels of Laurie R. King
"The definition of binge-able."-Los Angeles Times
"A lively adventure."-The New York Times
"Erudite, fascinating."-Houston Chronicle
"Whip-smart, suspenseful and intricately plotted."-Shelf Awareness
"Captivating."-Us Weekly
"Highly entertaining."-The Denver Post
"Deliciously rich."-Santa Cruz Sentinel
"Extremely exciting."-Chicago Tribune
"Truly memorable . . . Laurie King brings her always amazing imagination to the page to enthrall readers, as only she can do."-Suspense Magazine
"Compulsively readable."-Library Journal
"As intelligent as it is entertaining."-Chicago Sun-Times
"The definition of binge-able."-Los Angeles Times
"A lively adventure."-The New York Times
"Erudite, fascinating."-Houston Chronicle
"Whip-smart, suspenseful and intricately plotted."-Shelf Awareness
"Captivating."-Us Weekly
"Highly entertaining."-The Denver Post
"Deliciously rich."-Santa Cruz Sentinel
"Extremely exciting."-Chicago Tribune
"Truly memorable . . . Laurie King brings her always amazing imagination to the page to enthrall readers, as only she can do."-Suspense Magazine
"Compulsively readable."-Library Journal
"As intelligent as it is entertaining."-Chicago Sun-Times
Readers Top Reviews
J.K
Creepy serial killer. An estate garden that keeps producing bodies under statures. Decades old cold cases of missing women. A look back at 1970s communal life in California. Back to the Garden includes all,the above elements. It was a fast read and the moving pieces of the puzzle fit together nicely.
eyes.2c
A body found under a Gaddo statue in an old hippie commune. What relationship does it have to Inspector Raquel Laing, SFPD, Cold Case Unit, working on squeezing information about where the bodies are from an inmate dying of cancer, aka The Highlander? The death of young, long-haired blonde women are attributed to Michael Johnston. Stretching out the truth about where his victims are buried is part of his pleasurable game. How to get this lowlife to give ease to families across the nation. Raquel’s investigations take her back to the 1970’s, to Rob Gardener and his inheritance of a Californian mansion from his very estranged father, to the current times and the now famous feminist artist Gaddo and her sculptures on the property. How it all fits together is legendary in scope and puzzling in the extreme. An intriguing cold case that reaches into today and an exciting beginning to a new series. A Random House- Ballantine ARC via NetGalley. Many thanks to the author and publisher. (Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.)
LaffingKat
I enjoyed everything about this book. Laurie R. King writes intricately plotted mysteries involving memorable characters and vivid settings. This story is written partly from the present-day perspective of Inspector Liang, who is investigating a potential serial killer active during the 1970s. The rest of the story is told in various characters’ flashbacks to life in a west coast commune in the 1970s. Liang is smart, dedicated, and frustrated with the criminal justice bureaucracy. It was interesting to watch not only how she conducted her investigation, but also how she made decisions that straddled her personal and professional lives. I found most of the characters interesting and likable, with distinct personalities. I felt as though I knew these people, and I cared about what was happening to them. The plot was compelling. Switching back and forth between past and present maintained suspense about what was happening in both times, driving me to keep reading just one more chapter until I found myself breathless at the end. I recommend this for fans of historical mysteries as well as contemporary police procedurals. I received an ARC through NetGalley, and I volunteered to provide an honest review.
Moriah
I received a copy of this title from the publisher, but all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. Back to the Garden is a stand-alone (at least for now) title featuring dual timelines. The first is current day featuring Det. Raquel Laing who is involved with trying to identify as many victims as possible of a serial killer (the Highwayman) with days to live. The serial killer will reveal the location of victims if Raquel can bring him the name of one of his victims. At the nearby Gardner Estate, a body is discovered when a sculpture in the garden is moved. Given the estimated time that the body was in the ground, Raquel is convinced that they may have discovered another victim of the Highwayman, and is working against the clock to identify the victim before the killer dies. The other timeline is set during the 1970s when the Gardner Estate was a commune filled with hippies. This part of the story felt like a trainwreck that I couldn't look away from - you know that one of the characters is likely the body found in present day making for a tense read. Ms. King provides a compelling look into the counterculture of the time which looking back from current society feels almost unbelievably naïve. The mystery leading up to the reveal of the identity of the body is very well crafted and I honestly didn't figure out who it was until almost the very end. Some readers may find Raquel a difficult character to connect with, but the glimpses of her that we are provided are tantalizing. I hope that this is not the only title to feature Raquel.
Short Excerpt Teaser
1
Now
The day had been going so well, until the bones turned up.
It was a Monday, for one thing. Jen liked Mondays. The Gardener Estate was closed to the public, which always made it feel more like a family home than a place of work. The staff could park where they wanted, dress for comfort, and dive into their tasks without having to dodge the cameras and the clueless. Some of them even came in early, to work up an appetite for the morning break, and at noon they sat down together for an only slightly ironic communal lunch.
This Monday was also a perfect April morning on California's Central Coast: warm sun, blue sky, the formal gardens a mosaic of glorious color, the Great Field a sweep of brilliant seasonal green, thanks to the series of winter storms. The kind of day that tempted Jen to spurn office work and spend the morning in old jeans, allowing the real gardeners to order her around.
Except that those winter storms had created a problem.
Yes, it was great not to worry about drought for a change, to see the trees leaf out so generously and the nearby reservoir fill. Not so great was how the long months of sodden ground had toppled over three of the Estate's oldest trees, collapsed a stretch of century-old stone retaining wall, and-this being the matter that was keeping Jen from a day of nice, mindless weeding-lent a Pisa-like tilt to the biggest and most idiosyncratic of the Estate's outdoor statues.
Rafi, the head groundsman, had noticed the tilt back in February. It wasn't an immediate hazard, since the statue was outside the formal gardens and easy enough to fence off, but with good weather coming on, picnickers would soon arrive, and small children whose parents ignored the no climbing signs. Normally, a repair order would have gone through, a simple matter of choosing a contractor and having the Estate's art conservator there to supervise. But for this statue?
Manager, groundsman, and conservator, along with the hard-hatted driver of the big crane idling behind them, stood to survey the job.
"I could just finish tipping it over, so it's not a hazard," the driver suggested.
"Let the blackberries grow over it," Rafi agreed. "Call it environmental art or something."
"It is the weirdest thing on the place," Jen admitted. Jen Bachus had been the Estate's manager since the Trust took over, and before that, a neighbor and regular trespasser. Jen had definite opinions on the weirdnesses of the Gardener Estate-and a sixteen-foot-high, tilecovered figure with long skirts, an odd torso, and a trio of conjoined heads was a thing most visitors found unforgettable. And that was before they got to the expression on its face.
But the conservator was shaking her head. "You can't do that. It's a Gaddo." Although even her voice suggested a tiny bit of agreement: Midsummer Eves was kind of creepy.
Mrs. Dalhousie, the Estate's archivist and conservator, was only here because of the Estate's Gaddoes. She'd retired from New York's MOMA, moved west, and come with a ladies' group to visit the gardens-where she was astonished to find three (possibly four) sculptures by the artist known as Gaddo, a woman famous in the seventies, notorious in the eighties, and out of fashion by the end of the nineties, when her feminist outrage was superseded by Damian Hirst's masculine irony of rotting cows and formaldehyde sharks. There were signs that she was now, twelve years after her death, about to be rediscovered as the gynocentric precursor of bad-boy shock art.
Mrs. Dalhousie had instantly volunteered-rather, she walked in and took over. And once she'd sorted out the Gaddoes (which might include the Minoan snake-goddess figure they'd found gathering dust in the attic), she moved on to transforming the archives from a room full of memorabilia into a properly cataloged, scanned, and referenced archive of the Gardener Estate's century-long history. Mrs. Dalhousie approached every project, be it sculpture restoration or newspaper storage, with a computer's tireless energy, a monk's passionate dedication, and precisely nil sense of humor.
But not even Mrs. Dalhousie could claim that Midsummer Eves was the ideal ornament for a part of the Estate given over to picnicking families and long views over rolling hills. The Eves might have two other faces, but the massive laurel hedge made it impossible to tell. For decades, this face had loomed at the top of the Great Field like an avenging goddess, baring her sharpened teeth at passersby and frightening the more sensitive childr...
Now
The day had been going so well, until the bones turned up.
It was a Monday, for one thing. Jen liked Mondays. The Gardener Estate was closed to the public, which always made it feel more like a family home than a place of work. The staff could park where they wanted, dress for comfort, and dive into their tasks without having to dodge the cameras and the clueless. Some of them even came in early, to work up an appetite for the morning break, and at noon they sat down together for an only slightly ironic communal lunch.
This Monday was also a perfect April morning on California's Central Coast: warm sun, blue sky, the formal gardens a mosaic of glorious color, the Great Field a sweep of brilliant seasonal green, thanks to the series of winter storms. The kind of day that tempted Jen to spurn office work and spend the morning in old jeans, allowing the real gardeners to order her around.
Except that those winter storms had created a problem.
Yes, it was great not to worry about drought for a change, to see the trees leaf out so generously and the nearby reservoir fill. Not so great was how the long months of sodden ground had toppled over three of the Estate's oldest trees, collapsed a stretch of century-old stone retaining wall, and-this being the matter that was keeping Jen from a day of nice, mindless weeding-lent a Pisa-like tilt to the biggest and most idiosyncratic of the Estate's outdoor statues.
Rafi, the head groundsman, had noticed the tilt back in February. It wasn't an immediate hazard, since the statue was outside the formal gardens and easy enough to fence off, but with good weather coming on, picnickers would soon arrive, and small children whose parents ignored the no climbing signs. Normally, a repair order would have gone through, a simple matter of choosing a contractor and having the Estate's art conservator there to supervise. But for this statue?
Manager, groundsman, and conservator, along with the hard-hatted driver of the big crane idling behind them, stood to survey the job.
"I could just finish tipping it over, so it's not a hazard," the driver suggested.
"Let the blackberries grow over it," Rafi agreed. "Call it environmental art or something."
"It is the weirdest thing on the place," Jen admitted. Jen Bachus had been the Estate's manager since the Trust took over, and before that, a neighbor and regular trespasser. Jen had definite opinions on the weirdnesses of the Gardener Estate-and a sixteen-foot-high, tilecovered figure with long skirts, an odd torso, and a trio of conjoined heads was a thing most visitors found unforgettable. And that was before they got to the expression on its face.
But the conservator was shaking her head. "You can't do that. It's a Gaddo." Although even her voice suggested a tiny bit of agreement: Midsummer Eves was kind of creepy.
Mrs. Dalhousie, the Estate's archivist and conservator, was only here because of the Estate's Gaddoes. She'd retired from New York's MOMA, moved west, and come with a ladies' group to visit the gardens-where she was astonished to find three (possibly four) sculptures by the artist known as Gaddo, a woman famous in the seventies, notorious in the eighties, and out of fashion by the end of the nineties, when her feminist outrage was superseded by Damian Hirst's masculine irony of rotting cows and formaldehyde sharks. There were signs that she was now, twelve years after her death, about to be rediscovered as the gynocentric precursor of bad-boy shock art.
Mrs. Dalhousie had instantly volunteered-rather, she walked in and took over. And once she'd sorted out the Gaddoes (which might include the Minoan snake-goddess figure they'd found gathering dust in the attic), she moved on to transforming the archives from a room full of memorabilia into a properly cataloged, scanned, and referenced archive of the Gardener Estate's century-long history. Mrs. Dalhousie approached every project, be it sculpture restoration or newspaper storage, with a computer's tireless energy, a monk's passionate dedication, and precisely nil sense of humor.
But not even Mrs. Dalhousie could claim that Midsummer Eves was the ideal ornament for a part of the Estate given over to picnicking families and long views over rolling hills. The Eves might have two other faces, but the massive laurel hedge made it impossible to tell. For decades, this face had loomed at the top of the Great Field like an avenging goddess, baring her sharpened teeth at passersby and frightening the more sensitive childr...
