A pretty good mystery, even if the title makes no sense.

posted Dec 2, 2012 at 1:39PM

Flavia de Luce, age 12, is a genius who solves local mysteries in post-war England. Smart & snappy.

posted Sep 20, 2011 at 3:33PM

hahahaha, this was totally MY kind of book. I think, at heart, I am a seclusive, slightly annoying, poison-obsessed eleven-year-old girl. Oh, yeah, and the book’s writing style was brilliant. That was nice too.

posted Apr 30, 2011 at 4:07PM

An English Nancy Drew, who as smart or smarter than the police around her.

posted Nov 11, 2010 at 3:08PM

Hooray for Flavia! This feisty young heroine will win your heart, tickle your funny bone,and draw you into to her world of poisons and schemes to best her older sisters. The mystery is a fine one as well, with Flavia matching wits with the police to find the killer. Bradley has created a wonderful and engaging sleuth, and you will be racing to get the next book in this series.

posted Nov 5, 2010 at 7:41PM

Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce is a sly, secretive child. Her favorite hobby is concocting poisons in the upstairs laboratory of her old manor home. She has an extensive vocabulary, a knack for picking locks, and an unflappable sense of determination. So when a dead bird with a postage stamp stuck through its beak is found on the doorstep and a murdered man is found in the cucumber patch, Flavia rises to the occasion like no other detective, young or old, we’ve ever met before. Set in a small English village in the 1950s, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is chock-full of traditional mystery characters—the gossipy cook, the gardener with a mysterious past, the stoic police inspector. Then there’s Flavia’s family—a deceased mother whose presence still lingers, a passive father who is devoted to his stamp collection, and a pair of older sisters who cling to their own interests as obsessively as Flavia clings to her chemistry flasks and beakers. Of course out of all these finely-drawn characters, it is Flavia who takes the cake, saves the day, and wins the hearts of readers. This is author Alan Bradley’s first book, and besides winning the prestigious Canadian Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award, it is only the first of a series that stars this highly original girl sleuth.

posted Oct 12, 2010 at 11:47AM

If you do not read another mystery this year, you will want to read this one. The young miss slueth has all the wit and charm of Stephine Plum, the smarts of Sherlock holmes, and tenacisty of a bull dog on a bone.

posted Nov 4, 2009 at 12:08PM

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