The theme is always about bringing justice and restoring order to the house and village. The clues are provided for the reader so there’s actually hope of figuring out whodunit. Each book opens with Flavia becoming involved in a murder investigation. Like most Golden Age detective fiction, these books are set in English country houses and cozy villages. In the Great Tradition of Golden Age MysteriesĪuthor Bradley seems to have intentionally created a Golden Age of Mystery atmosphere in these novels. Precocious and cynical and lovable, Flavia is a one-of-a-kind sleuth in these charming, well-plotted mysteries.

Amateur chemist Flavia is all of 11 years old, but when a stranger gets murdered in her family’s garden, she is instantly determined to solve the murder. In The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Flavia de Luce brings something completely fresh and new to the mystery scene. Of this much the girl is sure: her father is innocent of murder - but protecting her and her sisters from something even worse….Īn enthralling mystery, a piercing depiction of class and society, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a masterfully told tale of deceptions - and a rich literary delight.70 year old Alan Bradley’s debut mystery novel quickly became an international bestseller- and with reason. Now Flavia is armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together, to examine new suspects, and begin a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself. And in a police cell, during a violent thunderstorm, Colonel de Luce tells his daughter an astounding story - of a schoolboy friendship turned ugly, of a priceless object that vanished in a bizarre and brazen act of thievery, of a Latin teacher who flung himself to his death from the school’s tower thirty years before. Soon her father, a man raising his three daughters alone, is seized, accused of murder. To Flavia the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions, and connections. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.” “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t.

For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath.

A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. It is the summer of 1950 - and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia’s family calls home. In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Historical Fiction

Sweetness at the bottom of pie