Orchid Fever

'You can get off alcohol, women, food, drugs and cars but once you are hooked on orchids you are hooked for life'. So says a New York orchid grower, and such obsession leads to violent behaviour as we see in Hansen's spellbinding account, first of an expedition through steaming Borneo jungles looking for orchid plants and then of the various plant smugglers, pollen thieves, corrupt judges, ice cream merchants and fantasists that constitute a large part of the orchid Mafia. Murder, spying, tenacious courage and vicious skulduggery all have a place in the world of international plant politics. 'Big, fat, full and fabulous' an old orchid grower is heard muttering to herself as she strokes a flower that has elaborate wings and a scrotum-like pouch 'the most obscene looking flower of the lot' says Hansen. Make no mistake - orchids are erotic and so are some of their fanciers. This bizarre horticultural tale takes us from the banks of the Orinoco to the hothouses of Kew, meeting en-route outrageous characters such as Xavier Garreau de Laubresse whose house in a Paris suburb is converted into a multi-level greenhouse containing vast quantities of priceless orchids and whose bedroom walls are pitted with bullet holes - 'An accident - the result of a non-orchid related incident' he explains. Hong Kong Triads and Columbian drug lords use the orchid industry to launder drug money and yet, although large sums of money are involved, we get the impression that it is a passion for the fragile exquisite bloom and its strange seductive odour that lies at the heart of even the most horrific behaviour. The author himself has been a fisherman, wild dog hunter and barber in Mother Theresa's centre in Calcutta. He has been shipwrecked on an uninhabited Red Sea island and imprisoned in Egypt and Israel as well as lecturing in the Smithsonian Institute so he is well qualified to portray such a weird and wonderful world. He does it with zest and wit. (Kirkus UK)