The Flavia de Luce Series by Alan Bradley

Sanctified cyanide
Super-quick arsenic
Higgledy-piggledy
Into the soup.
Put out the mourning lamps
Call for the coffin clamps
Teach them to trifle with
Flavia de Luce!

-The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag 

I had intended to write one entry for each book of the Flavia de Luce series--there are five so far--but it didn't work out quite like that. I love these books, so much so that it was impossible to stop after just one and record my thoughts. I went from one book right to the next with virtually no interruption, so eventually it seemed better to just tackle the series in one post, as my thoughts about the different plots would be bound to get a bit muddled. Here goes.

Flavia de Luce is a girl of nearly eleven living with her family in the small English town of Bishop's Lacey in 1950. She is an unusual child--fiercely smart, with a particular love for chemistry, and no real interest in maintaining the sort of propriety that a girl of age at that time would be expected to do. She runs wild through the village, accompanied only by her bicycle, Gladys, which formerly belonged to her long-lost mother.

Flavia's mother, Harriet, casts a long shadow over her life, though Flavia herself has no memory of her. Harriet left on a mountaineering expedition when Flavia was just one, never to return. Flavia's father retreated from the world after his wife's disappearance, seeking refuge in his collection of postage stamps. Her sisters, Ophelia and Daphne (or, as Flavia calls them, Feely and Daffy), torture Flavia with their accounts of her supposed early life, telling her she was a changeling, for example, or that she made Harriet miserable.

It's no wonder, then, that Flavia is so independent. And perhaps it should be no surprise that when she stumbles upon a dying man in her garden in the first book of the series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, she's far from terrified. In fact, she's fascinated, and sets about to solve the mystery of his death.

She's a dab hand at it too, and over the course of the series, she acquires quite a reputation for being involved whenever the game is afoot.  Flavia combines her keen sense of hearing--inherited from her mother--with her knowledge of chemistry and her sheer moxie to get to the bottom of things. It is nothing short of a delight to read along as she puzzles out each case.

I am absolutely in awe of Alan Bradley, who has such a sure hand in guiding this series. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie was his first novel, and he created such a beautiful character in Flavia as well as such a fully realized world in Bishop's Lacey. Even if there were no mysteries, I think I would enjoy following Flavia as she rode around on Gladys and visited Denwyn Richardson or Miss Cool, or the Puddock sisters. The clever mysteries--never overly convoluted, which seems like an absolute rarity in the genre at this point--do make it all the sweeter, though.

The most recent book in the series, Speaking from Among the Bones, ends with a bit of a cliffhanger. I will be waiting most impatiently, I must admit, until I can next return to Bishop's Lacey and follow the further adventures of Flavia, her family, and the rest of the village.

Up next: How I Became A Famous Novelist by Steve Hely

PS: While looking for an image for this post, I stumbled upon this promotional video for the series: http://vimeo.com/12758978. It makes me even more excited for the eventual adaptation. (Good luck to whoever has to cast Flavia!)