It is June 1950 and a sleepy English village is about to be awakened by the discovery of a dead body in Colonel de Luce's cucumber patch. The police are baffled and when a dead snipe is deposited on the Colonel's doorstep with a rare stamp impaled on its beak, they are baffled even more. Only the Colonel's daughter, the precocious Flavia - when she's not plotting elaborate revenges against her nasty older sisters in her basement chemical laboratory, that is - has the ingenuity to follow the clues that reveal the victim's identity and a conspiracy that reached back into the de Luce family's murky past.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
The Flavia de Luce series is the most original crime fiction series I have read in a long time. Flavia is a highly intelligent 10 year old, with a gift for chemistry, and a particular fondness for poisons used mostly for revenge on her two older sisters. When a body is found in the gardens of their once-grand home, Buckshaw, Flavia cannot help but start her own investigations. This book is like reading a cross between Miss Marple and the Addams family, and is guaranteed to give you a few chuckles and chills. Fantastic. As reviewed by 52MM
QBD, 23/07/2014
