WHAT TIME THE SEXTON'S SPADE DOTH RUST, eleventh (!) in the Flavia de Luce mystery series

WHAT TIME THE SEXTON'S SPADE DOTH RUST (Flavia de Luce #11)
ALAN BRADLEY
Bantam Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Flavia de Luce has taken on the mentorship of her odious moon-faced cousin Undine, who has come to live at Buckshaw following the death of her mother. Undine’s main talent, aside from cultivating disgusting habits, seems to be raising Flavia’s hackles, although in her best moments she shows potential for trespassing, trickery, and other assorted mayhem.

When Major Greyleigh, a local recluse and former hangman, is found dead after a breakfast of poisonous mushrooms, suspicion falls on the de Luce family’s longtime cook, Mrs. Mullet. After all, wasn’t it she who’d picked the mushrooms, cooked the omelet, and served it to Greyleigh moments before his death? “I have to admit,” says Flavia, an expert in the chemical nature of poisons, “that I’d been praying to God for a jolly good old-fashioned mushroom poisoning. Not that I wanted anyone to die, but why give a girl a gift such as mine without giving her the opportunity to use it?”

But Flavia knows the beloved Mrs. Mullet is innocent. Together with Dogger, estate gardener and partner-in-crime, and the obnoxious Undine, Flavia sets out to find the real killer and clear Mrs. Mullet’s good name. Little does she know that following the case’s twists and turns will lead her to a most surprising discovery—one with the power to upend her entire life.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Re-entering the fantasy world that is Buckshaw under the sole, legal rule of Flavia de Luce was...shocking, really. I know it's been four, maybe five years since I read the last one, but howinahell did I suspend disbelief for nine, or was it ten?, books with a kid behaving like an adult? And getting away with it?! No one, not one soul, seems to think "someone ought to be responsible for this kid's social development" and that makes me really unhappy.

So the hill of disbelief needed reclimbing. It was a trudge.

I was, about a third of the way in, ready to give up and Pearl-Rule this bad boy. I didn't because my memories of pleasures past were strong. Sort of literary ex-sex. I'd mostly forgotten the dramatis personae, so it took a while to get my eye back in on Undine...insufferable brat...Dogger, Mrs. Mullet, and Daffy, the last of Flavia's siblings still at Buckshaw.

The characters urging Flavia to get bratty, tantrum-prone Undine some kind of counseling are feeding into the idea that Flavia is, somehow or other, functionally an adult. As a smart kid myself...I read the Encyclopedia Brittanica for fun between the ages of nine and twelve...I'm here to say Flavia's smarts are believable but her emotional maturity, as far as it goes, is not. Her quite justified resentment of her older sisters, unengaged in her development apart from the expected sibling ugliness, shows the limitations of a fantasy of liberated childhood. It makes Flavia come across as far too adult for her not to pursue the earlier nastiness against now-married Feely and soon-to-depart Daffy, university bound bookworm and seemingly uninterested last sister.

So...Undine. She's a cousin, also orphaned, whose antics affect Flavia as her own antics affected Feely and Daffy in earlier books. She's the embodiment of the Parents' Curse: "May you have a child exactly like you, only moreso." Undine makes her value to Flavia obvious by getting and giving to her a very relevant clue to solving the puzzle set in this book. Mrs. Mullet...the suspect needing Flavia's help this time...that one's a very, very deep pool, and much more than has met the eye heretofore. But let's go outside the fantasy realm for a moment, what kind of awful effects does leaving what I'd honestly describe as a badly damaged by neglect kid in charge of one of the same create? Undine (every time I type her name I get frissons of Undine Spragg, from Wharton's The Custom of the Country and her ghastly, entitled 'tude that ends so very badly) needs, much like Flavia did, custodianship, not the gentle and lovely guidance (as opposed to rules and standards) of servants like Dogger and Mrs. Mullet. Really, though, that's the practical adult speaking, not the series reader.

Observant souls, all three of y'all, will note I said "did" above. That's due to my response to the Big Honkin' Twist near the end. No, I won't spoil it, but suffice it to say this really changes everything. I honestly had to talk myself down off the Pearl-Rule ledge again when I got there.

So how came I to give the book four whole stars? It sounds like I'm ready to rip it a new one, doesn't it? I might have. It was a close thing a couple times. I've said in lots of different places that I don't do a lot of re-reading. I have so many books that I will die with a lot unread. This was not always the case. When I was being "raised" by a neglectful, when she wasn't abusive mother, I read and re-read uncounted times Dodie Smith's 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Not the Disney-fied version, I hasten to add. That bowdlerized abomination is an affront to the rescue fantasy so brilliantly penned by the delightful Smith. This series is a forceful evocation of my own tween years, managing a world I wasn't prepared for without support and while dealing with absent or actively unhelpful siblings. I'm sucked in by this extraordinarily gifted kid's clever management of her world, doing so well that no one thinks a thing of enabling it further. I wasn't so good at it, this being reality...but it's a fun way to revise my life in my entertainment.

Don't start with this one, but if you left the series and forgot why you started it, jump in. You really didn't miss much in between, and this one's fun...from the proper series-reader perspective. Take off the rational grown-up hat.