Flavia de Luce Mystery Series, by Alan Bradley

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley
Adult, 2009

From fantasticfiction.co.uk:
It is June 1950 and a sleepy English village is about to be awakened by the discovery of a dead body in Colonel de Luce's cucumber patch. The police are baffled, and when a dead snipe is deposited on the Colonel's doorstep with a rare stamp impaled on its beak, they are baffled even more. Only the Colonel's daughter, the precocious Flavia -when she's not plotting elaborate revenges against her nasty older sisters in her basement chemical laboratory, that is - has the ingenuity to follow the clues that reveal the victim's identity, and a conspiracy that reached back into the de Luce family's murky past.
Trackgeek:
It was a thoroughly enjoyable book for readers of mystery and those with a penchant for chemistry. I enjoyed the depiction of 1950s England and felt it was very well written.
Graded an A.


The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, by Alan Bradley
Adult, 2010

From fantasticfiction.co.uk:
The plot, beginning with the arrival in Bishop's Lacey of a travelling puppet show, features a grisly murder during a performance of Jack and the Beanstalk in the village hall and reaches back to an earlier, even nastier crime centring on an ancient, rotting gibbet that has lain like a shadow over the village for years. For Flavia, undoing the complex knot that ties these strands together will test her precocious powers of deduction to the limit - and provide a shocking insight into some of the darker corners of the adult world.
Trackgeek:
Enjoyable follow-up to the first book, with the suspense was very well built.
Graded a B+.