Wake up to ‘The Big Dirt Nap’

   “The Big Dirt Nap” is the second gardening mystery outing for the aptly named Rosemary Harris. This time, Paula Holliday takes a busman’s holiday to the Titans Hotel in Connecticut’s wine country to share an all-expense-paid weekend with her former colleague in the TV business and BFF Lucy, who is working on a segment of her cable series “Sin in Suburbia.”
   In addition to spa time, Paula plans to feather her nest by writing a freelance feature for her local paper about the corpse plant on display in the hotel. The large plant (titan arum) is about to bloom in its glass case, which protects guests from its horrible odor as its common name suggests.
   Alas, this will not be the relaxing getaway Paula envisions, because a man she meets briefly at the hotel turns up dead in a Dumpster with her Dirty Business gardening company card in his pocket. In addition, Lucy starts sending cryptic text messages and fails to show up. Is Lucy in danger or just sidetracked by one of her amorous adventures?
   Allowed to return home, Paula fears she is being followed and finds out for sure when her house is burglarized and an old computer stolen. This sends her back to the hotel to find the answers — and look for Lucy.
   The story turns on the hotel’s efforts to get a piece of the profitable Indian casino action and includes Ukrainian thugs and angry Indians. Harris does an excellent job of creating suspense, particularly when Paula makes a slow crawl in her Jeep up a narrow mountain road at night while searching for Lucy. That said, the story moves quickly and with good humor, and can be easily enjoyed in a weekend.
   However, I still like Harris’ first book, “Pushing Up Daisies,” better. While she is able to work in the colorful Babe, a former rocker who now runs a diner with backup singers as waitresses, Harris has more trouble giving face time to Sgt. Mike O’Malley, who is out of his jurisdiction through most of “The Big Dirt Nap.” I also enjoyed the plot of the first book better.
   Happily, a third book is in the works and it sounds like Paula will spend more time back home in Springfield, Conn. Here’s hoping.
   (And for folks interested in mysteries involving plants, I want to add a recommendation for the late Rebecca Rothenberg (1948-1998) and her wonderful Claire Sharples botanical mystery series: “The Shy Tulip Murders,” “The Dandelion Murders” and “The Bulrush Murders”; a fourth book, “The Tumbleweed Murders” was completed by her friend and fellow mystery author Taffy Cannon.)