This is the 12th, and probably last, delightful mystery in the Flavia de Luce series. If you’re new to the series, it follows an 11-year old irreverent chemist and amateur detective pottering about with her poisons in her family’s decaying estate in 1950s rural England. If you are newbie, I recommend going back and starting at the beginning — it isn’t necessary, but it’s much more fun.
This book starts with an immediate hook — Flavia and Dogger (the family manservant with a complex past and a “black belt in noncommittal”) are called in to the (silent) Sisters of Clemency convent to help identify a recently deceased nun who — wait for it — turned out to be a man. The (quite satisfying) unraveling of this mystery takes us to the Klondike, the shell-shock victims of WWI, and an intriguing Rosary Code. The writing is humorous and full of the creative and surprising asides that constantly stream out of Flavia’s fertile mind. The characters are highly competent (each in their own way) and likably quirky. The story is fun to follow with the kind of relevant (and sometimes utterly irrelevant) tangents that will attract the intellectually curious reader.
Alan Bradley wrote the first book in the series when he was 70 based on his winning entry for the Debut Dagger fiction competition. He passed away at the age of 87 just this last May.
Thank you to Bantam Sons and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on November 3rd, 2027.
Books to look forward to ... 