Penny Black - Softcover

If you like your sleuths elegant, exotic, and exuberant, meet Britain's Penny Wanawake...

Funny, free-spirited Penny Wanawake, the knockout daughter of an African diplomat father and an aristocratic English mother, is dismayed to arrive in Big Sur from London and discover her vacation mate is missing. Penny's even more dismayed when Martha's body is found at LAX, clothed in a bright white orchid and multiple stab wounds. Who would have killed kind, silly Martha? A rival model beaten out on a photoshoot? Martha's racist Senator father, up for re-election and anxious to avoid scandal? Or could Martha somehow have gotten between two rival botanists, the narcissistic Frank Bernard and the engimatic Nicole Delage, both intent on winning the black orchid breeding sweepstakes?

In a turnabout of the James Bond model, suave, sexy, smart-mouthed Penny descends upon Washington, DC, where, with the inevitable dashing male counterpart, she pursues her quest for a remarkably blackhearted killer...

Susan Moody began writing crime novels with Penny Black, the first of the seven Penny Wanawake crime novels. Takeout Double, the first of the Cassandra Swann series, was published in 1993, and followed by Grand Slam, King of Hearts, Doubled in Spades, Sacrifice Bid and Dummy Hand. Susan has also written a number of short stories. Her first acclaimed suspense novel was Playing With Fire, and was followed with equal success by Hushaby, House of Moons and The Italian Garden. All of them were translated into several languages. Susan achieved a long-standing ambition to produce a best-seller, with Love Over Gold, the story of the Gold Blend coffee couple! This sold nearly 200,000 copies worldwide and made the Sunday Times best-seller list. It was unfortunate that she chose to write it under a pseudonym. She has also written a sequel to Francis Hodgson Burnett's children's classic, the Secret Garden. Misslethwaite was shortlisted for the annual award of the Romantic Novelists' Association and sold over 50,000 soft back copies in the first month of publication. It was published in the US as Return to the Secret Garden. In all, she has published 34 novels, most of them crime and suspense. Susan spent two years as a Creative Writing Tutor in Her Majesty's Prison, Bedford. She is a past Chairman of the Crime Writers' Association, serving in all as a CWA Committee member for seven years. She is a long-standing member of the prestigious Detection Club and served for three years as the President of the International Association of Crime Writers. In 2000, she published The Colour of Hope, which was phenomenally successful and sold in 20 different Countries. In the last five years, she has published Dancing In the Dark, Losing Nicola, Loose Ends and A Final Reckoning. Her latest novel is called Quick and the Dead and features feisty ex-copper and art-historian, Alexandra Quick. She spent a semester in Australia, as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tasmania, has taught a course in the Crime Novel at the University of Copenhagen, has given a master-class in crime writing on Meridian TV, and has led many courses and workshops in creative and crime writing in England, the US and Australia. Susan is married to maths professor, Professor John Donaldson, who has twelve grandchildren. Susan has one grandchild of her very own. She divides her time between south-west France and south-east Kent.