"Belladona: A flower. In Italian, a beautiful lady; in English, a deadly poison". Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary During a question/answer session in a speech I gave to a college media class last month, a student asked why I’d chosen a flower shop as a backdrop for my mystery series. My quick response was that I liked flowers and I loved flower shops -- the colors, the textures, and ah, those heavenly fragrances... But still, mixing murder with something as vibrant and alive as a flower? Isn’t that as unlikely as chocolate sauce on an omelet? (Yumm . . . Chocolate.) Okay, maybe that was a bad example. Being the argumentative type, (a genetic trait common to most women) I had to come up with a good rebuttal. So basically it’s this: Who can think of a black orchid without visualizing intrigue -- or the book or movie, The Black Dahlia, without thinking of murder? Who can picture a Venus fly trap without recalling Audrey II, that voracious [...]