Oops, so much for sticking to the TBR Double Dog Dare until April 1st. I heard that there was a new Flavia de Luce mystery out, and promptly put a hold on it at the library, expecting it might take a while to get to me. But it didn’t, and once I got the email telling me it was ready to pick up, well, I couldn’t not go get it, and once I had it, I couldn’t not read it. These mysteries are good light reading for me when I’m not sure what to read next: Flavia (the eleven-year-old heroine/sleuth) is clever and funny, and Bradley’s writing can be pleasingly playful: this book, for example, starts with a description of Flavia staring raptly at a severed head dripping blood: it takes a few sentences for it to become apparent that it’s a stained-glass window showing Salome and Herodias with the head of John the Baptist.
Blood is a recurring image in the book, which Flavia herself comments on: blood as a clue in a crime, but also blood in the sense of family ties, and as a subject of scientific investigation (in addition to being into detection, Flavia is passionate about chemistry, and analyzes her own blood (and that of her family members) under her fancy microscope). But right, the crime, and the mystery: it’s 1951, the quincentennial of the death of Saint Tancred, patron saint of the village of Bishop’s Lacey, and the saint’s tomb is to be opened by archaeologists. When the crypt is opened, though, there’s the surprise of a much more recent corpse: the church’s organist, who hasn’t been seen in about six weeks, and who, oddly, is wearing a gas mask.
Naturally, Flavia figures out who killed the organist and why, and the process of her doing so is, as usual, full of adventure and danger: she sneaks into places she shouldn’t, takes a late-night trip to the churchyard to investigate a tunnel between an outdoor grave and the church’s crypt, and has to contend with the criminals themselves. Meanwhile, ongoing family drama from the earlier books continues: Flavia’s older sisters still sometimes make life difficult for her (though they also have moments of humor or sweetness together), and the fate of Buckshaw, the de Luce family home, is still in peril.
The one thing that got on my nerves in this book was how much dialogue there is featuring Mrs. Mullet, Flavia’s family’s housekeeper, who’s perpetually dropping her aitches and spouting malapropisms (“A real fright, she ‘ad, babblin’ on about Mr. Collicutt and the four ‘orsemen of the pocket lips,” Mrs. Mullet says at one point (188).) Other than that, this was a fun read, with a cliffhanger of an ending that pretty much ensures I’ll pick up the next one when it comes out.
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