[Death in the Dordogne 02] • The Orchid Shroud

Interior decorator Mara Dunn and orchidologist Julian Wood team up again to solve two murders in Michelle Wan’s charming new botanical mystery.Mara is renovating the manor house of the wealthy Christophe de Bonfond when she discovers the body of a murdered infant. The body, concealed for more than a century, brings to light unexpected and critical information on an elusive Lady's Slipper orchid that Julian avidly seeks. Christophe hires genealogist Jean-Claude Fournier to exonerate his ancestors, only to have the expert unleash even more terrifying suspicions. When violent death strikes in the present day, Mara and Julian begin an investigation of their own that leads them to uncover a trail of murder spanning many decades.

From Publishers WeeklyWan'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. (July) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From BooklistWan explores the world of wild orchids in this lively if somewhat meandering sequel to Deadly Slipper (2005). French-Canadian interior designer Mara Dunn makes a grim discovery in the midst of restoring wealthy Christophe de Bonfond's sprawling estate in the Dordogne region of France. Hidden inside the manor's stone walls is the body of a murdered infant, wrapped in a shroud embroidered with an image of the elusive Lady Slipper orchid. A nervous Christophe hires dapper genealogist Jean-Claude Fournier to exonerate his family, but the de Bonfonds, Jean-Claude soon learns, aren't nearly as noble as they seem. (The family's history is riddled with tales of incest, and lycanthropy, a rare, and often violent, disorder in which individuals quite literally see themselves as wolves.) When Jean-Claude is murdered, Mara and her orchidologist beau, Julian, take over the case, determined to find a link between the bloodshed and the blooms. Readers undeterred by Wan's wandering plot will enjoy her vivid renderings of the offbeat characters, sumptuous cuisine, and loup-garou lore that suffuse this sylvan stretch of southwestern France. Allison BlockCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved