A thoughtful and literary crime novel - Rated 
I discovered Mark Mills by accident - he spoke alongside Emer McCourt at Edinburgh Book Festival a couple of years back. His debut, Amagansett (renamed Whaleboat House) was a period murder mystery set in Long Island just after WWII. It was stylish, well written and dealt with the social issues as the local population were being displaced by wealthy NYC types.
Mark Mills has now followed this up with a novel set in Tuscany in the 1950s. A young English student is tasked with uncovering the mysteries of a 400 year old memorial garden at a castle owned by a friend of his Cambridge tutor. As the mystery is uncovered - details matching with various classical texts - our student hero Adam discovers that the present day family have their own secrets. He starts to unravel those secrets, discovering what really happened when the castle was occupied by the Germans in the war.
The writing is well researched and very intelligent. Mills creates an air of menace that gets stronger as the novel progresses. But his forte is in creating believable characters with shades of light and dark. As the finger of suspicion is pointed, the suspects don't panic and wave guns around, they don't seek confrontation. Arguments are avoided, issues skirted. This lack of action then adds to the suspense and intrigue.
Moreover, the scene setting works well. Mills is a master of painting a scene with vivid, clear language. In this case, the mountains, the castle and the villages create a very claustrophobic atmosphere - the perfect environment for feuds to simmer and vengeance to be taken. And within each confined space, yet more confined spaces are created. Tuscany - the village - the castle - the garden - the grotto... The pacing, too, works very well. The details are covered effectively but painlessly in the opening third of the novel. The pace then quickens as the plot thickens. This really is a page turner.
And the denouement, when it arrives, is well thought through, completely lucid despite being really quite complex. It is a far cry indeed from Agatha Christie's unveiling of the culprit in front of the assembled guests and constables.
This is a thoughtful, literary version of the crime novel - and all the better for that. I think Mark Mills will go on to become a very well known name; deservedly so.
Pretty good - Rated 
An entertaining read, sometimes fairly literary (in that there are some references to myths and legends)but not overly so. The later sex scenes are very well done, although I thought the teasing one at the beginning a little awkward and unnecessary. The mystery itself is unusual and the book moves along at a satisfying pace. The main reason I wouldn't give the book 5 stars is that I was never convinced that the book was set in the 1950s. Comparing the sound of removing one's bottom from a leather chair to the sound of velcro, for instance, seemed to me to be anachronistic (velcro not very well known then, I think), and the tendency of people to say 'Excuse me?' rather than 'Sorry,' or 'Pardon' jarred for me. But perhaps the main reason I was slightly surprised whenever the date was mentioned were the general liberal attitudes towards relationships. These seemed to smack of a later era.
However if you can overlook these perhaps trivial aberrations this book is a very good read and ideal for summer. It is well-written, not over-taxing, the characters are interesting and sympathetic, and I found the whole thing absorbing right to the end.
"What they did in a moment, we live with forever." - Rated
Weaving Greek sculpture, renaissance literature, and even the horrors of the Second World War, Mark Mills' seductive tale centers on the strange doings of a mysterious Villa high in the hills of Tuscany. In search of a subject for his thesis, Cambridge student Adam Strickland is given a unique opportunity to spend the summer in Tuscany, ostensibly to study a 16th-century memorial garden belonging to the Docci family.
Naturally curious, Adam jumps at the opportunity, confident that wiling away a lazy summer in Italy will not only revitalize his soul, but also help him get over the effects of unceremoniously being dumped by his ex-girlfriend. Adam, however, isn't quite prepared for what he finds when he arrives at the Docci Villa. The garden surrounding the villa is in fact a complex warren of groves and grottoes and was conceived and laid out by a grieving husband to the memory of his dead wife.
Fed by a spring that runs just below the Villa Docci, this plunging patch of woodland is modeled on Roman gardens of the period, with meandering pathways, and rills, with inscriptions and neoclassical structures and statues, along with a temple and a pool, and even a nine-tiered amphitheatre crowned by a statue of a beautiful woman named "Fiore." It's almost as though the garden is representing the coming together of art and nature to create a whole new entity.
Adam also admires the Villa Docci itself, there's an air of austerity and artless candor about the building, and a robust, almost fortress like quality. In almost no time at all, Adam falls under Villa Docci's spell; and he can't actually say why the garden affects him so much, all he can point to is a vague sensation of having been momentarily transported somewhere else, a parallel world, unquestionably beautiful, but also strangely disquieting.
But Adam can't quite escape the feeling that there is something not quite right about this place. As the restless whispers echo at the back of his mind, a local man by the name of Fausto and also Signora Fanelli, the beautiful and seductive manager of the local pensione warn him of the dangers of getting to close to the Villa telling him to "be careful up at there at the Villa Docci, it's a bad place, and people have a tendency to die there."
Meanwhile, the aging Signora Docci lies alone in her bedroom at Villa Docci, instructing Adam that's he's free to come and go and his leisure, and is more than welcome to work out of the study if he wants to, and of course the library is also at his disposal. In fact, he is to have free run of the Villa, everything except the top floor, which is totally off-limits.
The garden steadily begins to transport Adam with its unsettling pull that somehow reeks of ancient gatherings and happenings, and it is here that he meets the lovely Antonella, Signora Docci's granddaughter who beguiles him with her understated beauty and tells him much about the origins of the mysterious garden, created by the devastated Frederico Docci in loving memory of his wife of Flora Bonfadio who was only twenty-five years old when she died in 1548.But why had Flora's husband waited almost thirty years - till the very end of his life - to lay out a garden to her memory? And what is the significance of the triumphal arch on which Flora's name is carved in its Italian form?
Adams questions about the garden however, do little to take the edge off Adam's need to know more about the Docci family's recent history. Apparently, Signora Docci's husband Benedetto had died some years before, and her eldest son Emilio was also dead, killed towards the end of the war by the Germans who had occupied the villa.
Devastated at the death of Emilio, Benedetto closed up the top floor exactly how the Germans had left it, sealing it off and locking it up forever. But Adam continues to wonder why this family chose to live with this painful memory, rather than allowing it to dissipate over the years. And as the purpose of the garden with all of its encryptions set in symbols and metaphors and allegory gradually comes to life, Adam must also contend with a family that has never really recovered from the death of their beloved eldest son.
The literary clues proliferate, the serpentine plot races along, and Adam is confronted with a grim catalogue of intrigues, deceits and unusual deaths that stretch throughout history as though the Villa Docci is intent to attract ill luck to itself. This is the serious business of murder as the web the Docci family spins gradually comes into focus. Throughout the course of the story, Adam seems to experience his own renaissance, as he willingly takes on the Docci family.
Beautifully delivered with some wonderful descriptions of the Tuscan landscape, Mills has written a fascinating literary thriller that gets right to the heart of one family's search for revenge and redemption. Mike Leonard July 07.
Unusual literary thriller - Rated
What a great read! Not only is this book exquisitely well written, but it has the merit of originality and the work of a fine mind behind it. Mills' evocation of Tuscany, its landscape and people is vivid, and his understanding and knowledge of the cultural heritage that informs the characters, past and present, is profound. A real treat for readers who like mystery wrapped up in literature - and for those Italy enthusiasts!
Excellent thriller, again - Rated
Loved it. The Savage Garden maintains, even exceeds, the very high standards set by Mills' first novel The Whaleboat House (what a relief that it didn't turn out to be a one-off). As before, The Savage Garden is well written, taking its time whilst being truly gripping - which is presumably why such novels are called "literary thrillers" by the publishing trade. Whatever, this latest book confirms Mark Mills is definitely an author to follow.
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