[Hampshire Nanny]

I was browsing through the list of recent posts and ran across this one:

Buchclub - August 2014: Flavia de Luce 1 - Mord im Gurkenbeet von Alan Bradley

Now, I don't read, speak, or understand German. But I have a bare minimum of decoding skills to realize that the book in question is the first book in the Flavia de Luce series, English title is The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. And, I know that "mord" is "death" but I cannot decipher "Gurkenbeet". Google translate is no help at all.

Next, I sent a message to a British friend living in Austria, asking if his German is good enough to translate this for me. He wound up talking to his wife, a native German speaker, and she translates "Gurkenbeet" as "that place in the garden where the cucumbers grow". (Wow! German packs a lot of meaning into a fairly short word.)

So a good English translation is Death in the Vegetable Patch -- and based on the story, it's a totally appropriate title, though not as intriguing as The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.