Garden of Evil by Edmund Plante

The seeds had been planted - the harvest would be hell. Seeing the cover and reading this blurb I couldn’t wait to get started on this 1988 novel by Edmund Plante. The description on the back only added to my excitement. An innocent nine year old and her family, a huge seventeen century house, black magic, evil seeds, and a garden of terror -- how could someone like me pass this up? Finding old out of print horror paperbacks like this is what I live for, not because I’m a collector of books (though I do display them), but because I love getting beneath the surface of what the bookstores and publishers tell us to buy. Sure, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Dan Simmons, Clive Barker, F. Paul Wilson, and Brian Lumley (to name a handful of bookstore regulars) are great, and I’ll pretty much gobble up everything they ever write, but it isn’t all that’s out there. For every bestselling title there are hundreds of other lesser known works, some of which are good, some of which are bad, all of which help make up the genre we love. It’s only right that each is given a fair chance by a reader like me. Plus discovering an amazing author that never really got discovered by the public at large yet published dozens of books during their career as a mid-list writer is always fun. It also makes one often wonder how, when the writing is so well done, could an author go unnoticed while others reach celebrity status?

Now I know what you’re probably asking: is Edmund Plante such a great storyteller that he should be ranked amongst the greats I named above? My answer: I don’t know. One book isn’t enough to decide this in my opinion. What I do know is the book kept me entertained throughout and therefore Edmund Plante is an author I would like to read more of. I’m also curious to know if this book was connected to the other advertised title Seed of Evil or was it a stand alone story? Either way I will be taking a look at Seed of Evil as soon as I can get my hands on it, which, naturally, means I will once again be at the mercy of my mailman. Tormenting me without book deliveries is his specialty, but I won’t get into that now. Instead let’s take a little look at Garden of Evil.

Molly Ludden is a smart, but quiet, nine year old, her deafness making her shy due to the cruel jokes fellow school children make at her expense -- jokes that she can’t hear with her ears, but can read upon their lips with her eyes. Actually, Molly is so good at reading lips that her mother, Lana Ludden, often has to look around just to make sure Molly isn’t watching if she ever wants to communicate something in private to her husband Steve. Happy and successful, the family enjoys their life together until one fateful day when Steve learns from his estranged sister Shelly that their mother is dying. Knowing he needs to be at her side for this, Steve takes the family to his childhood home. There his mother informs him that she is leaving the house to both her children, a decision that causes turmoil because Lana and Shelly get in a pissing match over the place. Had it just been Steve he would have sold his half to Shelly without any questions, his hated of the house, and the long commute from it to the restaurant he owns, making the decision a no brainer. Lana wants it, however, and, wanting to make her happy, Steve agrees to stay. In the midst of all this Molly has planted four gardens from a box of odd seeds she discovered in the basement. Unfortunately Molly doesn’t realize the horror she and her family will face because of this. The first victim is her cat, but it won’t be the last. An evil greater than anything nature could ever create was lying dormant within those seeds and now that it is free it will do everything within its power to survive.

A fast and easy read, Garden of Evil by Edmund Plante is a novel I would recommend to horror fans, though only to the type who don’t require a full and detailed explanation for why certain things happen. The reason I say this is because several little things occur with the various flowers that seem important at the time, but then just kind of get left behind once the final horror of the garden is revealed. With that final horror there is a brief explanation as to why everything was happening, but it still left several questions unanswered. For instance why did ravenous maggot-like insects appear in one garden? Why did the overwhelming aroma from another garden’s flowers cause some people to hallucinate that they were being killed? Why and how did a plant subdue a person enough to suck blood from their face? Why did some flowers grant wishes at night? And why, by god, did each garden grow at a different time, almost as if each one was a step toward the final garden unleashing its ultimate horror? If there was a reason for this I would have liked to have known what it was, because without an explanation, or a real solid connection, it kind of felt like a cheap filler to beef up the total page number of the novel. Like I said, though, it was still entertaining. It also kept me guessing. For those that can’t enjoy something that doesn’t have a full explanation, however, this probably wouldn’t be a good choice. Last but not least, if you don’t like a book that depicts a seemingly smart woman making really stupid decisions that puts her family in jeopardy -- even after realizing something horrible and unexplainable is going on -- then this wouldn’t be a good selection. At one point I actually tossed the book onto the coffee table in disgust because of this woman, the words what an idiot leaving my lips.

Oh, one last thing before I close. Does anyone know if the novel Seed of Evil is some sort of prequel to this book, or if the two are connected in anyway? Nothing on or in this edition of the book suggests that, but given the two titles, and the sense that there could have been a bigger back story to the evil, I feel the possibility of this being the case is pretty strong. If so this wouldn’t be the first time a publisher has failed to note this with books I have read despite the greater level of understanding that would have been had if the books were read in the correct order. Any insight into this would be much appreciated.