Deadly Slipper
A Novel of Death in the Dordogne
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The first in a new mystery series that has it all — a tragic puzzle, fabulous French food, and a peek into the fascinating world of wild orchids.
In 1984, a young Canadian woman vanished while on a hiking holiday in the Dordogne region of France. Was Bedie Dunn the victim of an accident? Or could she have been murdered? Haunted for years by the disappearance of her twin sister, Mara Dunn has moved to France to try to answer these questions.
Mara’s amateur investigations finally begin to show progress when she discovers a camera she is convinced belonged to Bedie in a second-hand store. In it is an old roll of film, whose exposures turn out to be mostly of wild terrestial orchids. Mara turns to Julian Wood, an expatriate English orchidologist, for help with the impossible: can they use two-decade-old photos of flowers to trace Bedie’s last route, and find the end of her journey? Julian is reluctant to get drawn into this seemingly hopeless quest, but the last exposure on the film is irresistible to him — an unknown species of Lady’s Slipper Orchid. If discovered, it might be the key to botanical fame — or it could be the marker to a shallow grave.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in the Dordogne region in southwestern France, Wan's debut, a French-flavored mystery with botanical window dressing, tracks the perilous search for a rare orchid and its long-missing hunter. Nineteen years after her identical twin sister, Bedie, disappeared on an orchid hunt in the Dordogne, interior decorator Mara Dunn (who relocated to the region) still can't let go. So when she discovers Bedie's camera its roll of film intact she approaches British orchidologist Julian Wood to help retrace her sister's last steps using the photographs of flowers. A picture of the exceedingly uncommon Lady's Slipper piques Julian's interest, and the pair are off, quarreling their way across the increasingly hazardous French countryside. The menacing locals aren't much help, including as they do the de Sauvignacs, an impoverished pair of elderly aristocrats and their sexy son, Alain, plus the Rochers, an incestuous mother-and-son pair who rob and abandon hitchhikers. Wan's careful botanical depictions and broad evocation of local flavor don't always balance the mechanical plotting and lack of suspense. Fans of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief will find this novel a little less literary.
