Flavia!

Just finished the second Flavia de Luce book: The Weed That Strings The Hangman's Bag.  Such fun!  I actually listened to this one on CD (I haven't decided yet whether that should count toward my 50 book goal, since I didn't actually read the book.  Maybe not, but I'm going to count it for now and we'll see how pressed for time I am at the end of the year. As Bobby Brown once said, "That's my prerogative.").  The reader on the audio book - Jayne Entwistle - was fabulous!  She had such a great (girly, British) voice and really made the joke bits funnier and had a cute way of portraying precocious, 11-year old Flavia.  I'm very picky about my audio book readers, and I thought she was just great. 

Like the first Flavia book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the story centers around precocious, poison-obsessed Flavia, her family and the townspeople of Bishop's Lacey.  I went into these books thinking they would be sweet and soft, sort of like the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books, but these have both had a hard little twist to them.  People die!  It's sad and sometimes scary!  But Flavia is also delightful at the same time, so it kind of evens out.  Can a book 'even out'?  That's how I think of it. 

There is a puppeteer, a German POW, and rat poison!  Sulfurous chocolates, a naked vicar hopping about in the woods and a secret pregnancy!  Lots to like.  I already look forward to the next one.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: Book 14

"It was as black in the closet as old blood."

A delightful first sentence for a delightful book! Seriously, this was a very fun (and suspenseful!) one.

It is 1950 in England. Flavia de Luce, age 11, lives at the country manor called Buckshaw. One early morning she finds a man breathing his last breath lying in their cucumber patch and subsequent events only make things mysterious-er and mysterious-er. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t," she narrates. "Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”

Flavia is a terrific little protagonist who has a way with words (love how she calls her sister "the Devil's Hairball") and a way with poison. She is funny and smart but also vulnerable - she is, after all, only 11. A bit Harriet the Spy, perhaps? Annoying but clever?

Anyhow, it's a mystery with a bit of philatelic history, and a genuinely engaging and fun story. (Lucky for me, Flavia is going to be the star of a series.) Charming. Thumbs up.