Valerie Petit. As respected as a botanist could be; creator of ornate bouquets for Paris’s elite bourgeois who requested only the best in beautiful, dying plants. Her husband, a man of old money, died mysteriously of a croquet mallet to the cranium. All signs pointed to Valerie as the culprit: fingerprints on the mallet, blood on her dress, a seething, demonic hatred of her beau, and her intense affinity for the sport of croquet. Yet she wore a different flower in her hair every day to court, cried with such saccharine conviction, and led everyone to believe that a lithe French damsel couldn’t possible (sic) wield enough force to deliver a crushing blow to a full grown man’s skull.
(from The Success of Suexliegh), by Zack Keller)
7½*/10. The full review is here.
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