Life must be filled up

US cover, which I prefer

‘Too short! Too short!’ is my usual wail on finishing the latest Flavia de Luce novel and knowing that a whole year must pass before the next one. No pressure on Alan Bradley, then; but he never lets us or Flavia down. How I dote on the brilliant, twelve-year-old chemist with her morbid fascination for poisons and murder. How I love Buckshaw, her decaying home; her sad, mourning father; sisters Daffy and Feely, each brilliant in her own way yet unkind to their little sister; faithful, damaged Dogger, the factotum who is so much more than he seems.

We left Flavia at the end of The Dead in their Vaulted Arches knowing more about the strange disappearance of her mother and about to be packed off (banished, as she sees it), to her mother’s old school in Canada. She doesn’t leave empty handed, for Aunt Felicity has given her a gift likely to be useful to a girl detective:
The crucifix itself was altogether quite remarkable, modeled (sic, this is the US edition), Aunt Felicity told me, on the idea of the Trinity, three-in-one: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And so it also contained, besides the pencil, a small but powerful magnifying glass that swung out from inside the cross, and a surprisingly complete set of lock picks. “For quiet Sundays,” she had said,

No sooner has a homesick Flavia arrived than a strange girl enters her room by accident, hides up the chimney when the headmistress turns up outside the door, then falls down it again, dislodging with her a charred corpse. Flavia’s reaction is typical:
I have seen numerous dead bodies in my lifetime, each more interesting than the last, and each more instructive. This one, if I was counting correctly, was number seven.
The question is: whose body? Was it murder and, if so, who is the murderer? Is it true that three girls have ‘disappeared’ from the school and were they murdered? Trust Flavia to find out, but a lot must happen first. Keen eyed readers will have noticed an extra dimension to this novel: not just a murder mystery but a school story, which will please lovers of the genre. Not even Hogwarts, though, is stranger than Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy, where nothing is quite as it seems. ‘Trust no one’, Flavia is told by the headmistress. Which of the girls should she be friendly with? Which might be ‘one of us’? (That is, in on the secret which Aunt Felicity has revealed but which I won’t.) As for the staff!

Flavia has some special treatment, in the form of extra chemistry lessons in the middle of the night, using the latest and most expensive equipment. She also has a surprising amount of time to herself, allowing her to go snooping about in her shameless way. Her mother’s photograph hangs in the hall of fame; is Flavia heading the same way or is she failing in her mission? It’s impossible for her to know what the mission is and even at the end of the story it’s not completely clear. Good! That means another book. I loved every page of As Chimney Sweepers and look forward to more Flavia. The book will be published in January in the USA but UK readers have to wait until next April. I feel very lucky to have been able to read the book pre-publication, thanks to Random House and NetGalley.


UK edition

US edition

I fell in love with Flavia de Luce when I read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and have followed her adventures avidly ever since. Throughout the series she remains eleven years old and each book follows on directly from the previous one, so I recommend reading them in order. I felt there was a slight falling off with I am Half-Sick of Shadows but in Speaking From Among the Bones Flavia was back on form. A fiendishly ingenious murder mystery was solved yet again by Flavia’s ferocious intelligence, complete disregard for her own safety and of course, the resources of her chemistry lab. and her trusty bicycle, Gladys.

The new book, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches (out next January) is different in tone; Flavia’s voice has changed slightly, which entirely suits the circumstances. Throughout the series, it’s been obvious that there is some deep mystery attached to the death of Flavia’s mother Harriet in the Himalayas. This book opens with the family and half the village waiting at the railway station for Harriet’s return. The homecoming is not quite what you might expect and is made more bizarre by the presence of Winston Churchill and the sudden death of a stranger, apparently pushed under the train. It’s impossible to outline the plot without giving massive spoilers so I’ll just say that many things which were previously hidden from Flavia are suddenly made clear. Of course, she solves the mystery, but that’s only part of the story, which manages to be at the same time funny (as Flavia always is) and dreadfully sad. It’s not just a good detective story but a good novel. If Alan Bradley chose to end the Flavia series right here it would be logical, but I so hope he won’t!

I read this book (at great speed) courtesy of NetGalley and I simply loved it.


UK edition

Don’t you think this title would fit well alongside Jean Becomes a Nurse, Judith Teaches and Margaret Becomes a Doctor? Yes, precociously gifted Flavia de Luce is back in another mystery story, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag. I loved the first Flavia de Luce book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and have been looking forward to the next one ever since.

It’s bound to lack the excitement of meeting eleven year old prodigy Flavia for the first time but doesn’t disappoint in any other way. A performance by a touring puppet showman ends with one of those on-stage deaths which many detective writers have used so effectively. I like Overture to Death by Ngaio Marsh, for instance. Flavia instantly detects the cause of death and by using trusty Gladys (her bicycle) and her extensive local knowledge, beats the police to solving what turns out to be a double mystery.

Gladys belonged to Flavia’s mother, Harriet, as did the unused Rolls Royce Phantom which lives in the coach house. In this book, visiting Aunt Felicity tells Flavia that she is *exactly* like her mother. This surprises the child, since she has often been told by her heartless elder sisters that she was adopted or, alternatively, that her mother couldn’t stand the sight of her and so killed herself. We know from the first book that Harriet died mountaineering in Tibet and that Colonel de Luce has never got over her death. Then there’s faithful Dogger, who dotes on Flavia and obviously knows more than he ever lets on. Looks like there’s plenty more to come on this story.

I loved the book and am sorry all over again that it will be a year before there’s another to read.

This comes via Letters from a Hill Farm and others. You take the first line of the first post in each month and reproduce it. Mine is painfully predictable and gives no idea of the domestic upheavals which have taken place here during the year.

January 1st: The door to the sitting room in the cottage swings shut all by itself in a rather spooky manner. I bought a knitted dog doorstop.

February 2nd: The back of the cottage this morning with the house next door and the little snowy heap that was my car cropped out. Photo of snowy cottage. That was the day the builders moved in.

March 1st: A lovely, mild gardening day yesterday and here's the first tree blossom of spring. Photo of cherry blossom.

April 2nd: Getting this in the post today has gee-ed me up to finish the other things I'm making. Some yarn had arrived in the post. What's more, I've used it all!

May 1st: Someone kindly lent me The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley and I fairly galloped through it; could hardly put it down. My list of books read in April.

June 3rd: I was going to post today about Mary Portas and her doomed attempt to turn around a failing charity shop. Instead, I wrote about books to read during a heat wave. See, we did have some good weather.

July 2nd: Yesterday, I took my visitor to see my favourite garden, at Cranborne Manor. It was the hottest day of the year.

August 3rd: Obsession is a popular theme for fiction: one thinks of Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes or Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love. Start of a book review.

September 1st: I always feel sorry for people who say they ‘can’t read’ anything by Jane Austen, Dickens, To Kill a Mockingbird or whatever because the books were ruined for them by exam study. Start of a post linking to a list of world-wide required reading.

October 1st: This month has been heavy on crime and thrillers. Post on books read in September.

November 1st: First, many thanks for all the get well messages, which were much appreciated; sorry if I haven’t always replied. Oh dear! Led to yet another book list.

December 1st: A much shorter list this month; a good thing, due to not being flaked out on the sofa, ill. November's books.