Deadly Slipper

Book excerpt: 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.