THE FLAVIA DE LUCE SERIES: I AM HALF-SICK OF SHADOWS (#4); SPEAKING FROM AMONG THE BONES (#5)

I AM HALF-SICK OF SHADOWS (Flavia de Luce #4)
ALAN BRADLEY
Delacorte Press
$4.99 ebook editions, available now

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED ON LIBRARYTHING CHRISTMAS 2011

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: It’s Christmastime, and Flavia de Luce—an eleven-year-old sleuth with a passion for chemistry—is tucked away in her laboratory, whipping up a concoction to ensnare Saint Nick. But she is soon distracted when a film crew arrives at Buckshaw, the de Luces’ decaying English estate, to shoot a movie starring the famed Phyllis Wyvern. Amid a raging blizzard, the entire village of Bishop’s Lacey gathers at Buckshaw to watch Wyvern perform, yet nobody is prepared for the evening’s shocking conclusion: a body found strangled to death with a length of film.

But who among the assembled guests would stage such a chilling scene? As the storm worsens and the list of suspects grows, Flavia must ferret out a killer hidden in plain sight.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: Flavia de Luce does Christmas. Buckshaw, Bishop's Lacey, is now the scene of Ilium Films's new Phyllis Wyvern extravaganza, The Cry of the Raven. The film company has paid the desperately strapped-for-cash Colonel Haviland de Luce a sizable sum to use Buckshaw as the backdrop for this bound-to-be-mega hit, which means Christmas will be spent with an entire film crew up the family's collective backside. Flavia meets the famous Miss Wyvern as she enters the house, charming as cheesecake on a plate of strawberries, even winning the adulation of the normally suspicious Flavia by demonstrating her apparently genuine interest in matters of murder: She quotes from the dreadful gossip sheet Illustrated London News about a recent scandalous killing. Well then!

Not long after the lady's arrival, the cast and crew and director make their various appearances, as does the Vicar, with a modest proposal: He'd like famous movie star Wyvern to appear as Juliet, her star-making role, in a village fete in aid of the church roof's repair. To absolutely universal astonishment, Miss Wyvern agrees, and the plot begins to spin faster and faster. Since the hairpins have begun to fall, and Miss Wyvern's true meanness is revealed, the fact that she's murdered by someone present at Buckshaw after the fete...which includes just about the whole village, since a blizzard's blown in, sealing all the audience in Buckshaw's foyer...comes as no surprise whatever.

Even though the bloom has gone off the rose of Flavia's admiration for the lady, a murder under her own roof is simply too much to resist meddling in! And meddle she does, searching the victim's room and even standing in at the post-mortem examination of the body. Flavia, though, is callously shut out by Inspector Hewitt of the Hinley P.D., as is his wont. He has, thinks Flavia, personal animus against her now, as Flavia made a terrible break at tea taken in the Hewitt home.

But in the end, Flavia solves the horrible, tawdry crime, and fails to become the next murder victim herself by dint of one of her chemistry experiments designed to trap Santa Claus on his way to the chimney, thereby disproving her horrible, heartless sisters's claims that there is no Santa. And, at the very tippy-end of the book, Buckshaw's future at the hands of the tax receivers is probably averted thanks to the very play that caused the Christmas crisis to begin with...a lovely, deft scene that wrapped up an end I was really ticked about having loose.

Merry Christmas indeed, Flavia.

Every series needs a Christmas book. This is it. If you liked the others, this one will please you; but it has the standard plot-hole and plausibility flaws. If they didn't tick you off before, they won't now, either. Happy Holidays!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


SPEAKING FROM AMONG THE BONES (Flavia de Luce #5)
ALAN BRADLEY
Delacorte Press
$4.99 ebook editions, available now

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED ON LIBRARYTHING FEBRUARY 2013

Rating: 3.9* of five

The Publisher Says: Eleven-year-old amateur detective and ardent chemist Flavia de Luce is used to digging up clues, whether they’re found among the potions in her laboratory or between the pages of her insufferable sisters’ diaries. What she is not accustomed to is digging up bodies.

Upon the five-hundredth anniversary of St. Tancred’s death, the English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey is busily preparing to open its patron saint’s tomb. Nobody is more excited to peek inside the crypt than Flavia, yet what she finds will halt the proceedings dead in their tracks: the body of Mr. Collicutt, the church organist, his face grotesquely and inexplicably masked. Who held a vendetta against Mr. Collicutt, and why would they hide him in such a sacred resting place? The irrepressible Flavia decides to find out. And what she unearths will prove there’s never such thing as an open-and-shut case.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: The ending threw me a curve.

The middle was a busy muddle.

The beginning was a laugh a minute.

And I enjoyed it all. I didn't know who the murderer was, and when revealed I was a bit surprised I hadn't thought of that. I was mildly ticked that, at the ending of the book after the murderer was disposed of, a loose end wasn't tucked tidily away but rather left to be part of the cliffhanger resolution. If Mr. Bradley should happen to pass into his Eternal Reward before the next book is completed and edited, I shall engage every root woman and witch doctor and psychic and spiritualist I can locate to hound the rotter into spirit-writing it.

So, since I'm usually a tartar about judging cozies, demanding the characters and the plot mesh, why am I still reading these somewhat ramshackle novels? After all, the murderer's identity isn't at all well set up, and the red herrings are ummm far-fetched, and the propulsive event is barely, barely set up and then ignored.

Yeah, well, cozies are about characters and about a species of ma'at maintenance, and these novels deliver all the pleasures of those qualities in spades, doubled. Bradley's quite improbable little genius Flavia de Luce is a pill of the first water, a know-it-all, and a little girl on the edge of some enormous growings-up that all of us who've passed through adolescence can empathize with. Her passive, defeated father, her cruel sisters, her delightful world of Buckshaw with its fully equipped chemistry lab and its decaying splendor, and the people of Bishop's Lacey, all mix together into an immersive Barsetshire-esque experience of enfolding charm and warmth.

This is the fifth book, don't begin here if you're picking up a new series as too much will be a spoiler for some payoff surprises in earlier books. But should you pick up the series at all? Hmmm. Don't, if you're a puzzle-solver; don't, if you have to have a sleuth whose abilities and access are believable; do, if you're after the aforementioned immersive experience.

But, if you do read the book, I defy you not to laugh at the fate of the Heart of Lucifer.