I don’t remember how I was recommended this novel, but am thankful post-read that I came across this un-put-down-able book. A good old-fashioned murder mystery with some very interesting characters, this book stood out because of it’s story-telling style and dry wit. The story is narrated by the book’s heroine 11 year old Flavia, and because her prose is really quite excellent, and I shall want to remind myself of it from time to time, this review will present some of the more acidic passages.

Flavia de Luce, a precocious child is living with her aloof father (“Father loved stamps more dearly than he loved his offspring”) and two older sisters, in the English village of Bishop’s Lacey. Sharp-witted Flavia is something of a prodigy, in love with chemistry, especially poisons. She is self taught, and experiments in an old laboratory in her ancestral home of Buckshaw. Flavia besides having more than her fair share of brain-power also has an acerbic tongue, and we get to read prose laced with some great tongue-in-cheek humor. Says she of her laboratory and love for chemistry :

Uncle Tar’s laboratory had been locked up and preserved in airless silence, down through the dusty years until what Father called my “strange talents” had begun to manifest themselves, and I had been able to claim it for my own. I still shivered with joy whenever I thought of the rainy autumn day that Chemistry had fallen into my life.

The household also includes Dogger, and old faithful of her father’s who serves as the gardener. Dogger is a little odd (we do not know of his past) and has “amnesiac” episodes, when he doesn’t remember of what he has done or where he has been. There is also soft-hearted Mrs. Mullet, the housekeeper cum cook, and Flavia has this to say of her :

Mrs. Mullet, who was short and gray and round as a millstone and who, I’m quite sure, thought of herself as a character in a poem by A.A.Milne, was in the kitchen formulating one of her pus-like custard pies.

Flavia’s mother, the oft-spoken of Harriet is dead, and we are told of the most devastating effects this tragedy has had on her husband, the eccentric Colonel de Luce. Flavia, antagonized by older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, wreaks revenge on them via carefully calculated chemical experiments, like injecting poison ivy into Ophelia’s lipstick, and melting her pearls into a gooey paste. She is a resourceful heroine indeed, with an ordered and sharp mind, and describes her passions thusly :

The book’s title was An Elementary Study of Chemistry, and within moments it had taught me that the word iodine comes from a word meaning “violet,” and that the name bromine was derived from a Greek word meaning “a stench.” These were the sorts of things I needed to know!


And then there were the poisonous gases: phosphine, arsine (a single bubble of which has been known to prove fatal), nitrogen peroxide, hydrogen sulfide . . . the lists went on and on. When I found out that precise instructions were given for formulating these compounds, I was in seventh heaven.


Once I had taught myself to make sense of the chemical equations . . . the universe was laid open for me: It was like having stumbled upon a recipe book that had once belonged to the witch in the wood.


What intrigued me more than anything was finding out the way in which everything, all of creation – all of it! – was held together by invisible chemical bonds, and I found a strange, inexplicable comfort in knowing that somewhere, even though we couldn’t see it in our own world, there was real stability.

Her detective powers are called into play, when Flavia discovers a dying man in the garden. The man is soon dead, having whispered to Flavia one mysterious, undecipherable word. The police arrive, and arrest her father on suspicion of murder. But Flavia and her bicycle Gladys set out to ferret out clues to the stranger’s identity, and rescue her father from jail. Things of course do not go as expected, but fearless Flavia does not lose heart, pushing onwards into grave danger . . .

This was a charming read, and author Alan Bradley creates a most quirky, likeable heroine, with a dark, dry wit. The author fleshes out his characters beautifully – the sisters have their fetishes, one is into beauty (and the achievement of it) and the other into books. There is also the very astute police detective who comes to investigate the crime. Inspector Hewitt knows more than he lets on, but really does not come off too badly when Flavia solves the mystery.

While the murder mystery was well written, I also read the book in search of Flavia’s smart-alecky dialogue. Here is an example of Flavia’s gift of the gab :

“I’ve come to see Dr. Kissing,” I said. “I’m his great-granddaughter.”


“Dr. Isaac Kissing ?” she asked.


“Yes,” I said, “Dr. Isaac Kissing. Do you keep more than one ?”

It is a little surprising and kind of unusual to have an 11 year old detective and one such as Flavia, but she is such a likeable character with a flair for the literary and, dare I say “chemical” that it is a most enjoyable experience to read her astute and sometimes quite snarky comments on the characters she comes across. Take for example, the local librarian, Mrs. Mountjoy, whom Flavia has to endure to do her research on events past. Mrs. Mountjoy, is a Nazi-ish character who also unfortunately addresses Flavia as “dearie” :

Miss Mountjoy ! The retired Miss Mountjoy! I had heard tales about “Miss Mountjoy and the Reign of Terror”. She had been Librarian-in-Chief. . .All sweetness on the outside, but on the inside, “The Palace of Malice.” Or so I’d been told.


If there is a thing I truly despise, it is being addressed as “dearie.” When I write my magnum opus, A Treatise Upon All Poisons, and come to “Cyanide,” I am going to put under “Uses” the phrase “Particularly efficacious in the cure of those who call one `Dearie.’”

“The sweetness at the bottom of the pie” won the Debut Dagger Award. It is, I am told, the first book of a series : The Buckshaw Chronicles. I look forward to reading them all.