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)