Common or Garden Crime by Sheila Pim first edition 1945

London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1945
 
*The author's scarce first crime novel*
 
8vo., burgundy coloured cloth with silver sparkles, lettered and lined in silver to upper board and along backstrip with publisher’s device to foot; together in the illustrated dustwrapper which sees a skull lurking inside some yellow flowers; pp. [vi], 7-192; a near-fine copy, lightly bumped at spine tips with some tiny spots and marks to endpapers and edges but otherwise clean and bright; the very good dustwrapper with some shelfwear, darkening, and rubbing; nicked with a closed tear (1cm long) to head of spine, and one tiny hole; original and unrestored. 
 
First edition, first printing. An interesting first book by this Irish Crime and horticultural writer. 
 
Born in Ireland, amateur horticulturalist Shelia Pim (1909-1995) wrote her first book, Getting Better: A Handbook for Convalescents in 1943, after falling ill. Recuperating at home, she began to grow fruit and vegetables in the family’s large garden, which gave her a grounding in horticulture. She went on to write for the magazine My Garden, as well as a gardening column for the Irish Times, and alongside the seven crime novels she wrote in her lifetime she also published a more serious undertaking - a biography of the Irish plant collector Augustine Henry - which involved many years of research involving his personal papers. Henry was himself a famed collector of plants, who wrote extensively on the trees of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 
 
Following the success of Common or Garden Crime, Pim’s first published full-length book, her fictional output focused on a similar theme, and included such titles as Creeping Venom (1946) and The Flowering Shamrock (1949). For her services to the study of horticulture, Pim was awarded a medal of honour by Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland, who also made her a life member. 
 
The present work tells the story of a murder by herbs. Setting during the Second World War, the plot revolves around Clonmeen, a village on the outskirts of Dublin, and a neighbour found dead after being poisoned by monkshood. “The place is quiet, not to say dull”, the work begins, “but not too quiet for a crime. We are also told that evil began in a garden…”
 
Highly sought-after.