Deadly Slipper
A Novel of Death in the Dordogne
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A reclusive English botanist helps a woman search for the truth about her missing orchid enthusiast sister in southwestern France in this “moody and elegant suspense story” (The Washington Post Book World).
Nearly twenty years have passed since Mara Dunn’s sister Bedie, an orchid enthusiast, disappeared while on a hiking holiday in southwestern France. Mara remains determined to find out what happened—but her only real clue is a sequence of wild orchids, including a mysterious, previously unknown Lady’s Slipper, captured on a roll of film found in Bedie’s long-lost camera. With the help of Julian Wood, a reclusive English botanist, Mara begins her search…stumbling into decades’ worth of local secrets and putting herself in danger. Rich in lush descriptions of the Dordogne, and laden with savory details of French cooking, Deadly Slipper is rife with surprising twists and turns.
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.
