The Orchid Shroud
A Novel of Death in the Dordogne
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A strange beast is killing both livestock and humans in the Dordogne . . .
Business is booming for orchidologist Julian and interior designer Mara, but things take a horrifying turn when, in the wall of the sixteenth-century manor house she has been commissioned to restore, Mara’s workmen find a mummified baby. Forensic analysis reveals that the baby had been smothered more than a hundred years before.
Julian discovers that the infant’s shawl is embroidered with an exact likeness of a rare orchid he has been researching. Meanwhile Mara falls under suspicion in another more recent murder, linked not only to the mummified child but, seemingly, to the spectre of a werewolf . . .
As sinister revelations abound, so too do the legends and superstitions of the Dordogne. The breathtaking world of wild orchids and delectable Dordognais cookery provide atmosphere in equal part to the unraveling mystery. A superb and accomplished follow-up to Deadly Slipper.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wan's sequel to her debut, Deadly Slipper (2005), nicely depicts an appealing village in the Dordogne, a part of France rarely seen as a fictional setting, and two lead characters with interesting vocations. Unfortunately, an overly complicated plot pulls the story off the rails. Interior designer Mara Dunn is overseeing the restoration of a manor owned by Christophe de Bonfond, scion of the area's leading family, when workmen make a terrible discovery: the remains of an infant, wrapped in a silken shroud and buried inside the thick walls. This horror puts Mara and her sometime boyfriend Julian Wood, landscape designer and orchidologist, on a circuitous pathway of investigation that toggles back and forth between centuries and between rival branches of the aristocratic family, and includes enough story lines to furnish half a dozen novels. The end result is not a more mysterious mystery but a cumbrous muddle.
