Silent Orchid

A dead collector. A flawless crime. A truth hidden in plain sight.When Barnaby Finch-reclusive, tyrannical, and revered as the king of ornithology-is found dead in his Victorian glasshouse, the scene appears immaculate. He lies among priceless feathers and a forest of rare orchids, killed by a fast-acting, sophisticated poison. Everything is ordered. Balanced. Perfect.Too perfect.For former barrister and art-restorer-turned-investigator Leroy Cunningworth, the crime offends the eye. Clutched in Finch's hand is a single white Emperor penguin feather-an artefact of Antarctic cold, impossibly out of place in the humid hothouse. It isn't evidence. It's a signal. And it's the first fracture in a carefully staged illusion.Working alongside his old friend, former intelligence officer and island police chief Jack Flint, Leroy peels back the layers of Finch's insular world on Phillip Island-where obsession masquerades as devotion, and beauty is often used to conceal cruelty. Beneath the immaculate surface lies a second, hidden crime scene, and a truth no one wants exposed.As Leroy applies a restorer's eye to the past, he uncovers a tragedy shaped by control, inheritance, and a love so tightly cultivated it became lethal.Silent Orchid is a tense, atmospheric mystery about perfection as a form of violence, and the quiet, dangerous ways truth blooms when no one is watching.(A standalone book in the Leroy Cunningworth Series, that can be read separately)