Berkley
Published November 18, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
Margaret Finch is an odd woman. She’s unusually tall and “big-boned” and has trouble making friends because she is extremely literal and has high expectations. She works with a scientist at a university, keeping his lab clean and well-organized and assisting the professor with his research. She idolizes him and is devoted to the current project, deriving a substance from a highly poisonous plant that might hold the cure for cancer. But then the professor is found dead, apparently of a heart condition, and neither the police nor university officials want to listen to Margaret’s concerns. She saw the professor’s body and recognizes the signs of a poisoning. Well, if nobody else is going to find out what really happened, she will have to do it herself.
This feel-good cozy has a protagonist who might be described as a hybrid of the protagonists of The Maid and Lessons in Chemistry. Margaret’s quirky obsession with routine and her social cluelessness are characteristics that is increasingly found in fiction, particularly in stories about women who are underestimated in a man’s world. In this case, our heroine is so committed to trivial detail and so aware that she is unloved and unattractive, it takes time to warm to her. But as she considers possible suspects – a jealous professor who wants to take over the research, a bitter ex-wife whose house is surrounded by a garden of poisonous plants – she learns things about her dead hero that make her question just how much she really knew him, and as she marshals evidence against one suspect after another, she often learns something that make her rethink everything.
We see her grow, even as her certainties are undermined. Her rather cold and prickly character warms up as she meets a kindly custodian who takes her quest seriously, and as she takes in a battered stray tomcat who brings out a nurturing side of her. We also come to respect her as a scientist, however underestimated by others. Her insights into plants and the nature of scientific inquiry enrich the story as well as deepen her character. As a light read set in a university laboratory, The Botanist’s Assistant delivers the kind of humor, quirkiness, and warmth that makes us turn to cozies when darker stories don’t appeal.