Book Review: THE WEED THAT STRINGS THE HANGMAN'S BAG BY ALAN BRADLEY

Genre:  Historical Murder Mystery/Cosy Mystery
Published by:  Orion  (April 2010)
Pages:  342  (Hardback)
My Rating:  9/10

About the Book:

The story opens with the immortal words 'I was lying dead in the churchyard' (spoken, astonishingly, by Flavia herself) and ends with a funeral watched by the De Luce family on a newly-installed television set.  Inbetween, Alan Bradley weaves a hauntingly nightmarish tale that involves Punch & Judy and a hitherto unexplored corner of Bishop's Lacey known as Gibbet's Wood.  The plot, beginning with the arrival in Bishop's Lacey of a travelling puppet show, features a grisly murder during a performance of Jack and the Beanstalk in the village hall and reaches back to an earlier, even nastier crime centring on an ancient, rotting gibbet that has lain like a shadow over the village for years.

The second book in the Flavia de Luce mystery series set in a small village in 1950’s England is every bit as good as the first one!

Flavia’s two older sisters -- Orphelia, obsessed with her looks and Daphne, obsessed with her books -- are still being horrible to her, telling her that she was adopted and nobody wants her.  Her father is still obsessed with his stamp collection and just wants a quiet life, which leaves Flavia plenty of time to go wandering around the village and surrounding countryside trying to ascertain who murdered Rupert Porson while he was in the middle of a puppet show......and after all, who would suspect an eleven year old girl of doing a better job than the police!

This time we are also introduced to Aunt Felicity (Flavia’s father’s eccentric sister) who comes to stay at the crumbling Buckshaw House to try and sort out the family’s ailing finances.  As we see life through eleven year old Flavia’s eyes we don’t know the exact details  but the villagers are full of gossip about whether her father will have to sell the family home.

I enjoyed reading Alan Bradley’s descriptions of the area --

Above me, Gibbet Wood clung to the top of Gibbet Hill like a green skullcap.  As I approached, and then entered beneath the branches of this ancient forest, it was like stepping into a painting by Arthur Rackham.  Here, in the dim green gloom, the air was sharp with the smell of decay: of funguses and leaf mould, of black humus, of slithering muck, and of bark gnawed away to dust by beetles.  Bright cobwebs hung suspended like little portcullises of light between the rotted tree stumps.

You almost feel as if you’re right there walking beside Flavia.  I really like Flavia and I also love the fact that she is obsessed with chemistry and even has her own magnificent Victorian chemistry laboratory at the south-west corner of her house.

This is a lovely gentle mystery which takes you along at a nice and steady pace, not rushing or hurrying to get to the reveal but all the ends are tied neatly up and you get a wonderful feeling of satisfaction that all is right with the world.  

The third book in this series is out now and is called A Red Herring Without Mustard.
The first book is called The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and my review is here.

For more on Flavia de Luce the official website is here

BOOK REVIEW: THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE BY ALAN BRADLEY

Genre: Mystery

Published by: Orion (Feb 2010)

Pages: 358 (Paperback)

My Rating: 9.5/10

THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE BY ALAN BRADLEY

About the Book:

For very-nearly-eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, the discovery of a dead snipe on the doorstep of Buckshaw, the crumbling de Luce country seat, was a marvellous mystery - especially since this particular snipe had a rather rare stamp neatly impaled on its beak. Soon Flavia discovers something even more shocking in the cucumber patch and it's clear that the snipe was a bird of very ill omen indeed. As the police descend on Buckshaw, Flavia decides it is up to her to piece together the clues and solve the puzzle. Who was the man she heard her father arguing with? What was the snipe doing in England at all? Who or what is the Ulster Avenger? And, most peculiar of all, who took a slice of Mrs Mullet's unspeakable custard pie that had been cooling by the window...?

My Thoughts:

I absolutely loved this book, it has all the ingredients of a typical English cozy mystery: set in the 1950's, an old crumbling country house in a small village, quirky characters, a mysterious dead body, strange happenings and an amateur sleuth who stumbles upon the clues right under the noses of the local police. Wonderful stuff!

Flavia is a most unusual little girl in some ways; obsessed with chemistry (she has her own lab on the top floor of the old house), she has acute hearing, is old beyond her years, has 2 horrible older sisters who treat her with disdain, and upon whom she likes to conduct experiments without their knowledge!

Her curiosity is first aroused when a dead bird is found on the doorstep and she wonders why her father is so horrified by it, and then a stranger's dead body is found in the cucumber patch, gasping his last words to her, all of which 'sets her mind into a tailspin' and which leads her into danger and excitement by unravelling the clues little by little.

I loved her vivid imagination --

'Fingers of friendship,' he said, whatever that meant.

Fingers of friendship? Had I just been given the secret handshake of some rustic brotherhood that met in moonlit churchyards and hidden copses? Was I now inducted, and would I be expected to take part in unspeakably bloody midnight rituals in the hedgerows? It seemed like an interesting possibility.

Alan Bradley's novel brings perfectly to life an era just after the War when life seemed simpler and slower with his acute observations of people. I laughed, I smiled, I sympathised, I was horrified, I cared about the characters. I was immersed in the story and didn't want it to end.

This is the first in the Flavia de Luce Mysteries and the website with lots more information is here

The 2nd book is called 'The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag' which I shall be reading and reviewing shortly.

The 3rd book in the series is called 'A Red Herring Without Mustard' and is published later this year.

Source: Borrowed from the local library