Cannonball Read 6, Book 30: The Dead In Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley

Flavia de Luce, we meet again. I’ve been nuts about the magnificently precocious 12 year old amateur sleuth ever since the opening pages of the first book, when she looked at the cook employed by her father at their huge country house and thought “will no-one rid us of this turbulent pastry chef?” She is an absolute delight of a character, though the series has shown signs of stalling, as Flavia continues to be the same age and remain in the same location, edging ever closer to Midsomer Murders territory.

So it’s a huge relief that this, the sixth instalment of the series, ups the game considerably. The cliffhanger ending of the previous novel was that Flavia’s mother Harriet had been found and was returning to Bishop’s Lacey. We start this book with the not altogether unsurprising development (since she has been missing for over ten years) that Harriet’s corpse is what has been found and her body is being returned to the village for burial. De Luces crawl out of the woodwork like never before, a mystery man goes under the train carrying Harriet’s body, Flavia becomes convinced she can resurrect the dead and somewhere, Winston Churchill pops up to ask about pheasant sandwiches. No, I haven’t had a stroke. See, Flavia’s mother was a government spy and Flavia begins to find out that the de Luce name is very heavily involved with protecting the realm and so it’s no wonder Harriet was killed. But who killed her? And who killed the man under the train? And why is there so much focus on pheasant sandwiches?

All will, of course, become clear, but not before Flavia meets her match in her equally precocious and multilingual cousin Undine and her frosty mother Lena. Bradley is back on form and some of the scenes between Undine and Flavia are properly laugh out loud funny with gems like “in ordinary circumstances, I would have responded to such a command by sending up a reply that would given Undine’s mother a perm that would be truly everlasting, but I restrained myself”. But the real joy in this book is that Bradley has aimed so much bigger with the murder mystery. Unmasking the perpetrator poses more questions than it answers and the end of this book sees Flavia parted not just from Buckshaw and Bishop’s Lacey, but from the UK entirely.

This epic widening of the canvas is something the series has been crying out for and here it is at last. I’ve dinged the last couple of books for being so safe in that regard and so I have nothing but praise now that all bets are off. Flavia will return next year in the 7th book, As Chimney Sweepers Come To Dust, and I say brava.

Cannonball Read 5, Book 106: Speaking From Among The Bones by Alan Bradley

 

Oh, Flavia De Luce. As literary creations go, she’s probably my most favourite of the past few years. She had me at “will nobody rid us of this turbulent pastry chef?” in her first outing. But I still find myself waiting for a plot that is even half as engrossing and satisfying as her gung-ho narration. I’m also still waiting for her to start ageing and now at five books in, it’s really just not conceivable that this much murder and mayhem can befall one small village in under 12 months. I mean, I know there’s Midsomer Murders, but come on.

The book opens with Bishop’s Lacey preparing for the quincentennial of St Tancred, an occasion to be marked by opening his tomb in the local church. Naturally, Flavia is there and of course she finds a recently deceased church organist where a 500 year dead saint should be. Most 11 year olds would be traumatised, but with four successful murders solved, Flavia is galvanised to be at the forefront of this one and sets about trampling all over the investigation with her signature blunt and precocious style.

It’s a very tricky tightrope to walk, making your protagonist insufferable within the story but absolutely charming to the audience. It’s one that is rarely achieved for me, as I generally find myself as annoyed as all the other characters. Notable exceptions include the two most recent Sherlocks, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller. And now, Flavia De Luce. Pretty much everyone who speaks to Flavia in the books ends up wanting to throttle her. But I found myself enchanted and cackling away at her brilliantly pithy commentary.

As for the mystery itself, it’s all bogged down in with missing jewels and love triangles and lead poisoning (!) and if it weren’t being relayed with as much gusto, it would really be shown up for the sub-par Agatha Christie it really is. The murderer is fairly obvious from quite early on, but Bradley thinks he’s filling the pages with red herrings. He isn’t. There is another storyline running throughout this instalment though; the de Luce’s impending financial ruin. They are so broke they have to put their mansion up for sale. I really thought seeing Flavia in such circumstances could really shake the next book up but Bradley decided to throw in a curve ball to end the book. It’s a top notch cliffhanger and hopefully a game changer. We shall see.

 

And that is a WRAP for Cannonball Read 5! Stay tuned for my first review for Cannonball 6.

Cannonball Read 5, Book 21: I Am Half Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley

 

In Flavia de Luce, Alan Bradley has struck gold. An eleven year old amateur sleuth and scientist, Flavia is an incorrigible and precocious delight. She won me over very early in book 1, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, when she wondered about the family cook, “will nobody rid me of this turbulent pastry chef?” and I have been unwavering in my devotion since. While my love of Flavia as a character is unwavering, I am increasingly finding myself wishing she was in better books.

Shadows is the 4th in the series and is a somewhat heavy handed homage to Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d. The title is lifted from the same source (Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott) and the set up is pretty much identical. Having fallen on hard times, Flavia’s father leases their enormous country pile to a film company as a filming location. The film being shot there will star the world famous megastar Phyllis Wyvern. Before the first day of filming, Wyvern is found dead, strangled by a strip of film that has been left tied about her neck in a decorative bow.

Bradley spends a lot of time setting everything up before he can knock it all down. It’s almost half way through the book before Wyvern is dispatched with. Many characters are introduced, red herrings are scattered about, and a sub-plot regarding Flavia trying to trap Santa with birdlime (don’t ask) fights for space alongside the somewhat half hearted investigation into Wyvern’s murder.

And that, in a nutshell, is my issue with the de Luce books. So much of it is taken up with extraneous gubbins, that the murder mystery is treated as if it’s almost surplus to requirements. The identity of the guilty party is uncovered through a series of coincidences rather than anything else, and some clues are never fully solved at all. It’s all dispatched with in a rather perfunctory fashion, so Bradley can get back to Flavia being Flavia. When you’ve created a heroine as delightful as that, it’s forgivable, but for future installments, Bradley needs to tip the balance back the other way. More focus needs to go on the plot machinations, to bring it in line with the glorious cast of characters he has now established.

It wouldn’t hurt to let Flavia grow up a little. Four books in and she’s still 11 years old. If nothing else, it stretches credibility that a village as sleepy as Bishop’s Lacey could experience such a high body count in such a small space of time. But more to the point, the thought of Flavia de Luce growing and evolving is frankly a bloody marvellous one.