Everyone has favorites that they return to over and over again: the restaurant with the best burgers ever, that song that reminds them of the senior prom, or the author that keeps getting better and better with each new novel. Every once in a while something new and different comes along, something that unexpectedly appeals to your sense of whimsey or makes you look at life a bit differently, and you find yourself falling in love yet again!
Chances are that an 11-year-old girl detective with a rich fantasy life and a brain for chemistry sounds like a great reading choice for a middle-schooler, but not for a fully developed adult bibliophile. Wrong! Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce is wonderful! In her dealings with her two obnoxious older sisters, boy-obsessed Ophelia and bookish Daphne, she is self-possessed and wildly imaginitive. For example, in her fully equipped chemistry lab, once the domain of great uncle Tar, she infuses Ophelia's favorite lipstick with poison ivy then waits patiently for symptoms to manifest themselves. How many of us with sisters wish we had the skill and gumption to have done something like this?
When Flavia discovers a nearly-dead man in the family cucumber patch, the Latin word "vale" whispered in his dying breath, she embarks on her first murder investigation. Her widowed father, a philatelist and acquaintence of the victim, is the prime suspect, and Flavia uses every resource at her disposal to solve the crime, displaying powers of deduction, scientific knowledge, and attention to detail rivaling those of the great Sherlock Holmes. There are no "boring" interludes in this wonderful mystery; it will hold your interest from beginning to end. I am looking forward to reading the next installment very soon!
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