This is another in the Flavia de Luce series of mystery novels. Flavia is a young girl, age 12, from an upper class British family who is always struggling to relieve the boredom of her empty days. She solves crimes along with the help of Dogger, her trusted assistant, the family's loyal servant. She also has two older sisters. Flavia, who describes herself as a expert chemist, loves to solve the crimes she comes across with her passion for poisons.
In this novel the plot revolves around a body Flavia happens upon as Dogger takes her and her sisters on a boat ride. As she dangles her hand over the side of the punt she happens to feel what she thinks might be a fish under the water, but pulls up something much more exciting, a dead body! Flavia is off and sleuthing.
This is a clever concept for a mystery series. Using a young child as the narrator and assisted by the adult servant, who really is leading the investigation. Also the use of different chemical descriptions both in the actual crime and in the investigation of testing different substances for chemical reactions, makes this a little bit of a different type of mystery.
By Alan Bradley
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