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.

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.

THE FLAVIA DE LUCE SERIES: THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE (#1); THE WEED THAT STRINGS THE HANGMAN'S BAG (#2); A RED HERRING WITHOUT MUSTARD (#3)

THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE (Flavia de Luce #1)
ALAN BRADLEY Rest in peace, Author Bradley.
Delacorte Press
$4.99 ebook editions, available now

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED ON LIBRARYTHING OCTOBER 2009

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: It is the summer of 1950–and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath.

For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”

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

My Review: This delight is a debut mystery! A debut mystery, if you please, and a Crime Writers of America Dagger Award winner, and written by a Saskatooni writer, and just flat funny.

Whatever they do to the water in Saskatoon, they should do it to some Murrikin cities that're famous for nothing (eg, Dubuque or Terre Haute) so's they can make their mark on the cultural landscape. Bradley and Bidulka haling from the same city...what up with that?!

Flavia de Luce is an eleven-year-old chemistry prodigy, daughter of an extraordinary vanished mother and a reclusive abasent father, youngest of three sisters who are each at difficult ages. She's the most outgoing of the three, she's the most determined and organized and intellectually gifted of them, and alone among her family is not paralyzed by her upbringing. Her determination to prove her father innocent of a murder which takes place directly below her bedroom window is absolute and unshakable. She succeeds because she's a) smart b) stubborn and c) "just a girl" so unthreatening to anyone...except the murderer, who takes her very seriously indeed.

Flavia's dry-martini humor is old for her age, but she's presented from the get-go as old for her age in some very believable ways. Her intellectual capacities are also presented in such a way as to be part and parcel of a believable character. I like this book, it flew past me at a breezy 50mph and hooked me into its slipstream. I suspended disbelief the moment I met Flavia, and the author rewarded me with a very enjoyable afternoon. I'll read the next Flavia book, "Tied Up with Strings" (which I pray is only a working title, it's just gawdawful!) when it comes out from Bantam in 2010.

Go on, give it a try. You'll be surprised how easy it goes down!

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


THE WEED THAT STRINGS THE HANGMAN'S BAG (Flavia de Luce #2)
ALAN BRADLEY
Delacorte Press
$4.99 ebook editions, available now

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED ON LIBRARYTHING JULY 2010.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: 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 Lacey 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 reporachful 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?

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

My Review: These are cute, cute, cute books! I don't buy it, a kid being this kind of smart, but I don't care. The plot's a little on the thin side, but I don't care. The fun of these books is the delightful fantasy of Eng-er-land post-WWII seen through the eyes of eleven-year-old Flavia, daughter of decayed privilege.

The murdered man, a puppeteer/drug dealer, *richly* deserved killing, which always makes a mystery more fun for me. His relict, of sorts, is of course a suspect, but her Delicate Condition (which Flavia suspects, and confirms by a chemical test that I'd never heard of before) ends up eliminating her...and shortly after she is in the clear, she buggers off somewhere...but I suspect that she'll be back.

The murderer, when identified, made me smile. I was so hoping the guilty party would be who it turned out to be, since I took an instant and complete aversion to that person. Not always a reliable indicator of guilt, but in this case...! Yippee!

So why read this? Because it's fun. Because it's frothy. Because it's summer, and because it's worth a few hours of your time to escape your ordinary world for the exciting world of Flavia de Luce.

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


A RED HERRING WITHOUT MUSTARD (Flavia de Luce #3)
ALAN BRADLEY
Delacorte Press
$4.99 ebook editions, available now

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED ON LIBRARYTHING DECEMBER 2011

Rating: 4.125* of five

The Publisher Says: Alan Bradley, author of the most award-winning series debut of any year, returns with another irresistible Flavia de Luce novel

In the hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey, the insidiously clever and unflappable eleven-year-old sleuth Flavia de Luce had asked a Gypsy woman to tell her fortune—never expecting to later stumble across the poor soul, bludgeoned almost to death in the wee hours in her own caravan. Was this an act of retribution by those convinced that the soothsayer abducted a local child years ago? Certainly Flavia understands the bliss of settling scores; revenge is a delightful pastime when one has two odious older sisters.

But how could this crime be connected to the missing baby? As the red herrings pile up, Flavia must sort through clues fishy and foul to untangle dark deeds and dangerous secrets.

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

My Review: Flavia de Luce of Buckshaw, Bishop's Lacey, is in it up to her neck again in this third outing of Alan Bradley's wildly popular series. This time she burns down a gypsy woman's fortune-telling tent, takes the woman home over her father's presumed objections, and then finds the lady bludgeoned almost to death in her caravan.

Next up is a meeting with the gypsy's semi-estanged granddaughter, deliciously yclept Porcelain, whose surprise presence in the crime-scene caravan causes Flavia to be assaulted and, subsequently, to invite the woman home with her. While escorting the younger gypsy into Buckshaw, her rambling, underheated Stately Home, Flavia espies a for-sure corpse dangling from Poseidon's trident. (That's one of Buckshaw's fountains, not the real Poseidon, of course.) It proves to be local ne'er-do-well and remittance man Brookie Harewood, last seen slouching about in Flavia's drawing room! Will the wonders never cease!

No, in fact, they won't, and Bradley spins a net for every red herring imaginable as Flavia encounters forgers, thieves, religious dissenters called Hobblers who baptize babies a la grecque (by dipping the little angels into running water by one heel), long-lost smelly men, reams of chemistry textbook stuff that manages not to make the reader's eyes roll back in their sockets,and murderers. Mustn't overlook the murderers.

One empathizes with Colonel de Luce, widower and soon-to-be bankrupt. He has a precocious daughter. Poor bastard.

Whatever else it is, this book is fun. It's just plain old-fashioned chuckle-inducing fun. It's a little ramshackle, what with the plot holes and all, and the behavioral improbability index starts high and never comes down, but so what? Flavia's chemistry fetish caused me to smirk a bit in the first book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and her all-around precocity wasn't helping stuff. I found the Colonel to be an absurd character, someone directly from the Wodehouse Warehouse. There just isn't enough vitriol to heap on Flavia's horrid sisters, Ophelia and Daphne (Feely and Daffy to Flavia).

But here's the thing: Each of these characters is reported in Flavia's first-person, eleven-year-old perspective. Keep that in mind, and there is a sudden SNAP as the lenses in the optometrist's big, black machine fall into place: “Better now, or now?”

And that's when you should read these books: Now.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE GRAVE'S A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE, somewhat befuddling ninth Flavia mystery

THE GRAVE'S A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE
ALAN BRADLEY (Flavia de Luce #9)
Delacorte Books
$26.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Flavia is enjoying the summer, spending her days punting along the river with her reluctant family. Languishing in boredom, she drags a slack hand in the water, and catches her fingers in the open mouth of a drowned corpse.

Brought to shore, the dead man is found to be dressed in blue silk with ribbons at the knee, and wearing a single red ballet slipper.

Flavia needs to put her super-sleuthing skills to the test to investigate the murder of three gossips in the local church, and to keep her sisters out of danger. But what could possibly connect the son of an executed killer, a far too canny police constable, a travelling circus, and the publican's mysteriously talented wife?

My Review: Not the best entry in the series. The subplot about the poet was underused; the subplot about the kid, Hob Nightingale, was rushed through and gave nothing useful to the resolution; Carl Pendracka is mentioned but not meaningfully (being American, I suppose he was destined not to be anything except comic relief); I liked Dieter's cameo...but really, is there any point to mangling the book? It's the NINTH in a series by an 80-year-old accidental author!

The major news, at least for me, comes from the author's announcement month before last of the CBC TV series based on the books. I can't imagine how they'll make this into anything like the fun thing the reads are; somehow it seems unlikely they'll find a Flavia, but it's not my job to do any of it so good luck to 'em all.

If you're not already a series fan, don't start here. If you stalled out around book seven, As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, as I did, it's worth keeping on. If your stall came earlier in the series, maybe it's not for you. This book won't, in my never-humble opinion, change anyone's mind one way or another.

The issue really is about the sense I have that Author Bradley is losing control of, or interest in, his subplots. The Nightingale family is at best sketched in; Flavia's discursive ruminations on chemistry are foregrounded; in fact, quite a lot of verbiage that feels to me like filler is Flavia's tangential blahblahblah. Some of that is charming, and too much (where I feel this book's iteration of it falls) is tedious and takes page time away from more important or, at least to me, interesting subjects to cover. Some of them, like the aforementioned Nightingale family, could very reasonably be seen as crucial to the plot and therefore the scanted attention to them and their history is a significant defect. I felt the same way about Undine's sketchy appearances after being introduced. At least she's mentioned again in this book.

Well...everything has its time, and permaybehaps the time for Flavia has ended. The next book, likely to be the last, has not come too soon.

THRICE THE BRINDED CAT HATH MEW'D, a game-changing book comes eighth in the long-running Flavia de Luce series

THRICE THE BRINDED CAT HATH MEW'D
ALAN BRADLEY (Flavia de Luce #8)
Delacorte Press
$26.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Hailed as “a combination of Eloise and Sherlock Holmes” by The Boston Globe, Flavia de Luce returns in a much anticipated new Christmas mystery from award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Alan Bradley.

In spite of being ejected from Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in Canada, twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is excited to be sailing home to England. But instead of a joyous homecoming, she is greeted on the docks with unfortunate news: Her father has fallen ill, and a hospital visit will have to wait while he rests. But with Flavia’s blasted sisters and insufferable cousin underfoot, Buckshaw now seems both too empty—and not empty enough. Only too eager to run an errand for the vicar’s wife, Flavia hops on her trusty bicycle, Gladys, to deliver a message to a reclusive wood-carver. Finding the front door ajar, Flavia enters and stumbles upon the poor man’s body hanging upside down on the back of his bedroom door. The only living creature in the house is a feline that shows little interest in the disturbing scene. Curiosity may not kill this cat, but Flavia is energized at the prospect of a new investigation. It’s amazing what the discovery of a corpse can do for one’s spirits. But what awaits Flavia will shake her to the very core.

THIS BOOK WAS A NETGALLEY READ. THANK YOU.

My Review: What?! ::incoherent word salad::
EDITED AFTER SLEEPING OFF INDIGNANT OUTRAGE
Yes, that's right, this book ended on a note that raised within me the Category 5 hurricane of outrage and indignation. I won't discuss what it was because it would make me utterly completely furious to know this turn of events before I got there and would, indeed, sour me on the read altogether.

Because it's a very sour thing that happens.

As is his habit, Author Bradley (that dreadful gong farmer {see text for this *hilarious* new old insult} whose misdeeds I'm not quickly going to forgive) starts with Flavia making wonderfully trenchant observations:

There are those persons, I suppose, who would criticize me for loving a chicken to distraction, but to them I can only say "Boo and sucks!" The love between animal and human is one that never fails, as it does so often among our own sorry tribe.

Thus Flavia on the first problem she encounters when returned from Canada to the loving embrace of her homeland and family. The combination of childish taunt with accurate character assessment of our species is the trademark thing this series offers. It's clearly a taste, and not everyone's favorite. I confess to needing a long break after As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, a most unsatisfactory entry into the series that left me disgruntled if not outright annoyed. I didn't like the silliness of the Nide and its cover story. But there one is, a long-running series must make an effort to freshen itself up if not reinvent itself or the dreaded series sag will set in.

Flavia's current case, which she must solve before the winter of 1951 ends (references are made to "His Majesty" and to Christmas, so it's before 6 February 1952 when George VI died), is the death of a strange duck named Sambridge. Flavia discovers his body in a completely unexpected way, exactly as one would expect. Being a sleuth to her core she uses her only chance to view the crime scene to observe many details but seems not to have a lot of joy from them. Her strangest find is a book that belonged or belongs to a girl with whom she's acquainted, one Carla Sherrinford-Cameron, whose ghastly pretentious artsy-fartsyness causes Flavia actual pain:

Carla Sherrinford-Cameron, her hands clasped together at her waist like lobster's claws, was singing "The Lass with the Delicate Air," and I found myself wishing that I had thought to bring a firearm with me—although whether to put Carla out of her misery or to do away with myself, I had not quite yet decided.

(That's a song I have to admit made me wince even when Julie Andrews emitted it.) But what was the dreadful Carla's book doing at the scene of old Mr. Sambridge's murder? Why was he murdered? What significance does his quite strange habit of carving weird creatures for churches have?

All in good time. This is Author Bradley's show so we'll let him elucidate his purposes in his own way and at his own pace. The usual suspects are deployed, Inspector and Mrs. Hewitt, Cynthia the vicar's wife, sisters Feely and Daffy, Dogger...all present and accounted for. New series regular, it would seem, is Mrs. Mildred Bannerman late of the Nide. Her assistance to Flavia in this case is invaluable. Why is she taking such an interest in Flavia? Is there a deeper purpose to this lady's presence in England? And what goddess placed a helper whose connections are *the*exact*ones*needed* in Flavia's pursuit of a killer?

I will say I found the resolution to the murder far-fetched and impractical, and a bit less than believable even within the heightened reality I've come to expect from the series. But the major shocker is not even to be hinted at. It is a shocker. But you'll see, series readers. Those joining the party just now: Don't start here. Nothing will make sense, none of the pleasures will please, which is a waste and a shame. Read the books in order for them to be at all worth your eyeblinks.

AS CHIMNEY SWEEPERS COME TO DUST, the seventh Flavia de Luce mystery.

AS CHIMNEY SWEEPERS COME TO DUST
ALAN BRADLEY (Flavia de Luce #7)
Delacorte Press
$26.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Hard on the heels of the return of her mother’s body from the frozen reaches of the Himalayas, Flavia, for her indiscretions, is banished from her home at Buckshaw and shipped across the ocean to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in Toronto, her mother’s alma mater, there to be inducted into a mysterious organization known as the Nide.

No sooner does she arrive, however, than a body comes crashing down out of the chimney and into her room, setting off a series of investigations into mysterious disappearances of girls from the school.

My Review: We all know by now what the deal is when we pick up a Bradley mystery: We're suspending disbelief in the premise of a school-girl who also happens to be a gifted forensic chemist, possessed of a fully stocked laboratory, and the youngest member of an astonishingly oblivious and neglectful family who leave the child alone to get on with her solving of the many murders that occur in her remote village home.

Yeah, right. Not even in postwar England (1950-ish) would a kid have that kind of freedom. But without that, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. Where's the fun in that? Go with it. Surf on Bradley's wave and the reward is a mother of all waves keeping you sharp and alert lest you miss the wave's chicane.

Flavia's Aunt Felicity is somehow less, rather than more, imposing in this entry into the series. I wasn't at all sold on the Nide...its existence struck me as a bit childish...but I am fully willing to put my concerns aside. Reading these books isn't about being transported to a world one reasonably expects to exist, after all. The premise of Harriet coming home to be buried made me cringe a bit, it seemed so grisly...that said, I wasn't angered by the event once the details were known. I could see why we had to go here.

It was fun, and while I'm no convert to the idea of more books set in Toronto (a flimsy drop-curtain illusion of Toronto as the setting was), I understand why we had to be there for this story to unwind. The mystery itself, not for the first time, failed to generate much suspense in me. I suppose this is a far-reaching effect of following a long-term series, since I see it setting in on almost all my fellow series fans. The difference for me, in this series' case, is that I am still charmed by the idea of a kid solving adult crimes, and satisfied by Bradley's humor and whimsy. Seven books and counting....

THE DEAD IN THEIR VAULTED ARCHES, Flavia de Luce comes of age in book 6!

THE DEAD IN THEIR VAULTED ARCHES (Flavia de Luce #6)
ALAN BRADLEY
Delacorte Press
$24.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.9* of five

The Publisher Says: On a spring morning in 1951, eleven-year-old chemist and aspiring detective Flavia de Luce gathers with her family at the railway station, awaiting the return of her long-lost mother, Harriet. Yet upon the train's arrival in the English village of Bishop's Lacey, Flavia is approached by a tall stranger who whispers a cryptic message into her ear. Moments later, he is dead, mysteriously pushed under the train by someone in the crowd.

Who was this man, what did his words mean, and why were they intended for Flavia? Back home at Buckshaw, the de Luces' crumbling estate, Flavia puts her sleuthing skills to the test. Following a trail of clues sparked by the discovery of a reel of film stashed away in the attic, she unravels the deepest secrets of the de Luce clan, involving none other than Winston Churchill himself. Surrounded by family, friends, and a famous pathologist from the Home Office--and making spectacular use of Harriet's beloved Gypsy Moth plane, Blithe Spirit--Flavia will do anything, even take to the skies, to land a killer.

My Review: Childhood's end comes to each of us at very different times, and in very different ways, but always comes in a single moment. Nothing is ever the same again. No perception is unaltered, no thought is ever again innocent. One minute you are a child, and preoccupied with child things, and the next you are not.

It's memorable, I suspect, for all of us, no matter the event that precipitates it or the age at which it happens. In this sixth Flavia de Luce novel, she leaves childhood behind. Bradley's description of the moment, of a great wooden cog on a vast gear moving a notch, is spot-on. I can't quote it directly because it would spoiler a plot point.

Now let me address a fact of the series novel's life. Some books in a series are middle books, like middle children. They are there, but somehow not quite noticed enough or given a good space of their own to occupy. There is not a single series in which this is not, eventually, the case. Who remembers Framley Parsonage? Do you even know it's the fourth in Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire? When enumerating the series, I frequently have to search for this book in the Dead Letter Office of my brain. It's not as if nothing happens in the book, either. (And there's a character in this series names after a pivotal character in this book. More on that anon.) The marriages and the resultant intertwining of the fates of so many plot threads in the series make it a pivotal book. But who ever cites it as a favorite novel, or even a favorite in the series?

Middle Book Syndrome.

This is a middle book. It's not at all a bad book, just a middle book. And the fun is just beginning at the end. What the book is not is a mystery, in the puzzle-solving, here-are-the-clues sense. The mysteries Flavia is solving this time are, to put it simply and still not spoiler anything, the ones we all must resolve to discover what, now we are no longer children, we are. Flavia's extremely well-developed sense of herself, unusual in a child, is at last made part of a world that the girl must join. Herself is explained to herself, if you follow that convoluted thought process.

The world awaits. And that's a giant risk Bradley is taking: The world Flavia is joining will either cause people to put the series down for good, or will cause them to send him nastygrams for not writing faster. It is that polarizing a development.

I'm on the fence. I can see this going horribly wrong as we sink into the Swamps of Seriousness, and I can see it being amusingly fluffily unserious. But what I can't see is why this particular development surprised me so much. After all, an eleven-year-old sleuth isn't the set-up for a long-term cozy series, is it? So something had to tie the bow on the tushie of her childhood. And here it is. Heart it or hate it, the next books will not be the same kind of cotton candy, and won't be in the same world that child Flavia saw in Bishop's Lacey and Rook's End (there's a chess joke in that name which I only just got reading this book) and the Palings.

Having finished this book quite late last night, I was ruminating on its connection to Framley Parsonage and was struck by a thought: The character of Adam Sowerby, introduced earlier in the series, recurs here; and Sowerby is the name of a pivotal character in Framley Parsonage...could Bradley be creating his own corner and his own take on my dearly beloved Barsetshire? I have lamented in other threads the absence of a 21st-century Angela Thirkell, an extender of the deep and abiding Englishness of Barsetshire. Might Bradley, the Canadian, be weaving us some more tales from the rag ends of Trollope's beautiful creation?

Gosh, I hope so.