Friday 16 May 2008

Third in series

Finished May 15
A Twist of Orchids by Michelle Wan
I've been reading this series since it started and I'm still thorougly enjoying it. The setting is France's Dogrdogne, although the author is Canadian.
Mara Dunn is an interior designer, who is from Canada but has lived in France for almost a decade. Her friend and lover Julian Wood is a landscape designer and orchidologist. He is from Britain, but has also lived in France for a long time. They are both well-integrated into the local community and have many friends, both local and foreign inhabitants.
One of the neighbours has died in a seeming accident, leaving behind a husband, Joseph, suffering from Parkinson's. Joseph believes someone is coming into his home at night and terrorizing him. Mara is helping out with his meals and thinks something fishy is going on.
Local Turkish shopowners have trouble when their son disappears and their shop is ransacked. They ask Julian, a regular customer, to help find their son but is unable to locate him before he turns up dead of a drug overdose. Julian wonders if this is connected to a undercover drug officer found dead nearby.
Meanwhile someone is casing and robbing unoccupied vacation homes in the area, focusing on antiques and leaving mocking poems behind.
There is a lot going on, and Mara and Julian are still working out the intricacies of their relationship, which adds some emotion to the mix.

No comments:

Post a Comment