Synopsis: The Dahlias are a group of women who belong to a garden club. Their small town is recovering from the War and trying not to participate in the looming depression. The Dahlias are concerned for each other as well as their town; they are also trying to come to grips with the changes in the roles of women. They inherit a house to be used as their clubhouse, but it comes with a ghost. There is a car accident that the Dahlias believe is actually murder. Two convicts escape from a nearby prison and the Dahlias are worried about the one who remains at large hanging around the town. Finally, there is monkey business going on at the bank and the Dahlias don't believe that one of their members is guilty. All of these mysteries are solved by the Dahlias.
Review: This is a slow moving book that paints an interesting picture of a small town in the south. The outcome of each mystery is interesting and one of them is actually unexpected. ( )

Enjoyable story set in the 1930's. I remember my grandmother talking about some of the " making do" things mentioned in the book. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

The Darling Dahlias & the Cucumber Tree gently exposes a small town in Alabama in the 1930’s where life revolved around family and friends, and many people faced financial ruin. The story centers on women involved in a gardening club back in the day when flower gardens and vegetable gardens presented women with a pleasure. The women competed and canned and shared the fruits of their labors with one another. A pretty face and beguiling manner quickly charms the men of the town, but that creates a problem. I thoroughly enjoyed the analysis done by the women in solving two crimes. The writing starts slowly, but lures the reader into the story. A very pleasing portrait of Southern life in the 1930’s. ( )