Botanist's Guide to Parties and Poisons

London, 1923. Saffron Everleigh has just started work as a research assistant in the botany department at University College London. Her colleagues doubt that a woman belongs there, and some whisper that she got the post on the strength of her late father's name rather than her own ability.

At a university dinner party, a professor's wife collapses and dies. The poison that killed her is unidentified, and suspicion falls on Saffron's mentor, Dr. Maxwell. Saffron refuses to stand by while he takes the blame. She uses her training in plants to trace the poison to a rare and dangerous species.

Fellow researcher Alexander Ashton joins her, and the pair become something closer to a romantic prospect along the way. Their search takes them through humid greenhouses, darkened gardens and the private affairs of the university itself. They have to clear Dr. Maxwell before the killer acts again.

This is a historical mystery in the Golden Age manner, the first in the Saffron Everleigh Mystery series. The detection rests on botanical science of the early twentieth century, and the romance builds slowly beside the investigation rather than taking it over.