The Scent of Scandal. Greed, Betryal, and the World's Most Beautiful Orchid. 2012. XIV, 299 p. gr8vo. HGardcover.

After its Peruvian discovery in 2002, Phragmipedium kovachii became the rarest and most sought-after orchid in the world. Prices soared to 10.000 US Dollar on the black market. Then one showed up at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, where every year more than 100 000 people visit. The collision between Selby's scientists and the smugglers of Phrag. Kovachii, a rare ladyslipper orchid hailed as the most significant and beautiful new species discovered in a century, led to search warrants, a grand jury investigation, and criminal charges. It made headlines around the country, cost the gardens hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, and led to tremendous internal turmoil. The author unravels this tangled web to shine a spotlight on flaws in the international treaties governing trade in endangered wildlife, which may protect individual plants and animals in shipping but do little to halt the destruction of whole colonies in the wild. The book unspools like a riveting mystery novel, stranger than anything in Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief or the film Adaptation, it shows how some people can become so obsessed with beauty, with profit, with fame, that they will ignore everything, even the law.