SANTA CRUZ — Many might not immediately associate Sherlock Holmes with botanist Alice Eastwood, but to Santa Cruz author Peggy Townsend, there are a lot of parallels between detectives and scientists.
“They’re curious, they’re tenacious, they pay attention to detail, they follow leads, they don’t presume things,” she said. “I thought, wow, a scientist would be a great amateur detective.”
Thus, Townsend was inspired to create Margaret Finch, the protagonist of her fourth novel “The Botanist’s Assistant,” where a murder in a science lab propels research assistant Finch to try to crack the case. Published Nov. 18, the book has received rave reviews and ranked on multiple Amazon lists.
Townsend’s name should be familiar to Santa Cruz residents. For 33 years, she was a reporter and editor of the Sentinel, covering everything from crime to feature stories to managing coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. She retired in 2007 but still felt compelled to write. She became a contract writer for UC Santa Cruz, authoring articles on the college’s history and the world of science. After writing about real people’s lives for so long, she wanted to try her hand at fiction writing.
It was quite a process, as she explained.
“It turns out writing fiction is a whole lot different than writing nonfiction,” she said. “I basically started studying. I started reading books to see their structures, I went to workshops, I read about writing, I got in a workshop group here with other amazing writers who taught me a lot about writing. It was kind of a process of challenging myself.”
Townsend published her first novel, “See Her Run,” in 2018 as the first entry in her two-part Aloa Snow series centered around a former news reporter who becomes an amateur detective. The followup, “The Thin Edge,” was released in 2019, and she published her first standalone novel — the Alaska-set thriller “The Beautiful and the Wild” — in 2023.
For “The Botanist’s Assistant,” Townsend drew upon her work with UC Santa Cruz where she interviewed many scientists, leading to her epiphany of scientists being similar to sleuths.
“I just fell in love with them and have so much admiration for what they do,” she said. “I began thinking about the scientist as an amateur sleuth in a mystery novel.”
Additionally, Townsend’s sister is a scientist, and during hikes, she often points out different plants and talks about their classification, where they grow, how they germinate and defend themselves against predators and diseases. This compelled Townsend to center her story around botany.
“Watching her relate to plants was really inspiring to me,” she said. “I began to do my own research about plants, read some books, spent some time out looking closely at plants. That was a big part of my process: to fall in love with plants.”
“The Botanist’s Assistant” stars Finch, the research assistant to biologist Jonathan Deaver who is working with plants to develop a cure for cancer. After Deaver is found dead in the university science lab, Finch notices a lot of details are not adding up, especially with officials’ explanation of his death being due to natural causes. This leads to her untangling a web of secrets with the assistance of a former reporter-turned-newly hired night janitor.
Townsend said there are many themes to “The Botanist’s Assistant,” including loneliness, perseverance, going up against adversity, finding peace with others and dealing with lies and jealousy. She also said that it is more lighthearted than its premise would suggest.
“Luckily, a number of reviews have noticed that it’s a funny book,” she said. “There’s a lot of humor in it.”
Townsend is pleased with the reception “The Botanist’s Assistant” has gotten so far. It has received positive reviews in publications like Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, and on sites like Goodreads and Amazon — where it currently sits at No. 72 on its list of bestsellers in women’s crime fiction and reached as high as No. 22 on its list of new books about amateur sleuths. Likewise, the book’s cover features a positive critical blurb from Nina Simon, the best-selling local author of “Mother-Daughter Murder Night.” Sara Levine, the managing editor of the website for longtime TV journalist Katie Couric’s company Katie Couric Media, placed “The Botanist’s Assistant” on a list of what to watch, stream and read for the week of Nov. 16 to 23 alongside Amy K. Green’s “Haven’t Killed in Years,” the neo-Western thriller film “Eddington” and the series “Pluribus” by “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan.
“It hasn’t been discovered by Oprah or Reese Witherspoon, but it’s getting some good buzz out there, and that’s very heartening,” said Townsend.
On the day of “The Botanist’s Assistant” release, Townsend took part in an author event at Bookshop Santa Cruz where she read from the book and discussed her writing. The Skylight Room in the center of the store was filled to capacity.
“Bookshop Santa Cruz is so generous to local authors,” she said. “Looking out in the audience, there were so many people that I knew and people that I didn’t know, and they’re all readers. They’re all people that love books, so they’re kind of my tribe.”
Townsend is currently working on an outline for a second Finch novel, but she said it will all depend on sales for “The Botanist’s Assistant.”
“I’d love to write a second Margaret Finch book,” she said.
Like with any good mystery, Townsend hopes to entertain readers with “The Botanist’s Assistant.”
“I want to make them be able to escape the world for a few hours while reading the book,” she said.
“The Botanist’s Assistant,” published by Berkley Books, is available locally at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., and at various online book retailers.