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Feb 23, 2018PimaLib_ChristineR rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
While there are several entries to the precocious-youth-solves-mystery genre, Flavia de Luce is one-of-a-kind. Bradley does a stellar job with Flavia as a ten-year-old. With her mother dying on a mountain in Tibet when she was one, and her father sunk in his philatelist pastimes, Flavia, and her two older sisters, Ophelia (Feely) and Daphne (Daffy) have the run of Buckshaw, the ancient family home. Flavia's tastes run to chemistry, and specifically poison. She spends much of her free time in the Victorian lab left by an ancestor. Despite her knowledge of chemistry, and her ability to sniff out clues, Flavia is still tormented to tears by her sisters, and yearns for a closer relationship with her father. It's a nice balance. Besides the characters and dialogue, Bradley builds a great traditional whodunit. Flavia first discovers a dead bird on the back stoop, with a stamp impaled on its beak. Later, she snoops on her father arguing with a man she's never seen before...until she finds him dead in the cucumber patch the next morning. Is her father a killer? Who's the stand-in for the village librarian and what is she up to? Flavia is intent on finding out the answers, even if it means pulling off her braces.