Book Review - The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag

Synopsis:  From Dagger Award–winning and internationally bestselling author Alan Bradley comes this utterly beguiling mystery starring one of fiction’s most remarkable sleuths: Flavia de Luce, a dangerously brilliant eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders. This time, Flavia finds herself untangling two deaths—separated by time but linked by the unlikeliest of threads.

Flavia thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacy are over—and then Rupert Porson has an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. The beloved puppeteer has had his own strings sizzled, but who’d do such a thing and why? For Flavia, the questions are intriguing enough to make her put aside her chemistry experiments and schemes of vengeance against her insufferable big sisters. Astride Gladys, her trusty bicycle, Flavia sets out from the de Luces’ crumbling family mansion in search of Bishop’s Lacey’s deadliest secrets.

Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she’s letting on? What of the vicar’s odd ministrations to the catatonic woman in the dovecote? Then there’s a German pilot obsessed with the Brontë sisters, a reproachful spinster aunt, and even a box of poisoned chocolates. Most troubling of all is Porson’s assistant, the charming but erratic Nialla. All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can’t solve—without Flavia’s help. But in getting so close to who’s secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head?

First Line:  "I was lying dead in the churchyard."

Random Quote:  "Mrs. Mullet was staying late to finish off the semi-annual scouring of the pots and pans:  a ritual that always filled the kitchen with greasy, superheated steam, and Buckshaw's inhabitants with nausea.  On these occasions, Father always insisted on sending her home afterwards by taxicab.  There were various theories in circulation at Buckshaw about his reasons for doing so."

Review:  Ah, the return of Flavia de Luce, the intrepid girl detective from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie! I loved the first one and this is great, too!

Cottage Garden, Tissington, Derbyshire - Image by UGArdener via Flickr

There's something beautifully old-fashioned about these books, their characters, and their language and yet they feel completely modern, too. In some ways they remind me most of We Have Always Lived in the Castle perhaps as crossed with Harriet the Spy. I adore the characters in these books and thoroughly enjoy reading about the village of Bishop's Lacey. Honestly, the murder and its solution are purely incidental and I think that's how it should be.

In this installment there are also hints that all may not be well in the de Luce household. The author introduces a new character, Aunt Felicity, who may or may not be able to save the day for the family. Bradley seamlessly interweaves the adult world as seen through the eyes of a very believable 11-year-old girl who is taking on the world from the back of her trusty steed ... er, bike ... Gladys. Most fun.

FTC Disclosure:  San Leandro Public Libary

Rating:  Purple