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Published Jan 2019
352 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
A finger in a wedding cake is only the beginning in this deliciously shocking mystery featuring Flavia de Luce, "the world's greatest adolescent British chemist/busybody/sleuth" (The Seattle Times).
Although it is autumn in the small English town of Bishop's Lacey, the chapel is decked with exotic flowers. Yes, Flavia de Luce's sister Ophelia is at last getting hitched, like a mule to a wagon. "A church is a wonderful place for a wedding," muses Flavia, "surrounded as it is by the legions of the dead, whose listening bones bear silent witness to every promise made at the altar." Flavia is not your normal twelve-year-old girl. An expert in the chemical nature of poisons, she has solved many mysteries, sharpening her considerable detection skills to the point where she had little choice but to turn professional. So Flavia and dependable Dogger, estate gardener and sounding board extraordinaire, set up shop at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, eager to serve - not so simple an endeavor with her odious little moon-faced cousin, Undine, constantly underfoot. But Flavia and Dogger persevere. Little does she know that their first case will be extremely close to home, beginning with an unwelcome discovery in Ophelia's wedding cake: a human finger.
"Starred Review. Bradley, who has few peers at combining fair-play clueing with humor and has fun mocking genre conventions, shows no sign of running out of ideas." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Despite the novel's patently improbable plot, Flavia's over-the-top use of alliteration ('ghastly goings-on at the graveside') and proudly precocious, sesquipedalian vocabulary ("I delight in deliquescence"), along with the thoroughly endearing cast of characters, make this series' tenth installment a laugh-out-loud winner." - Booklist
"Perhaps the most consistently hilarious adventure of the alarmingly precocious heroine, who's capable of confiding in her readers with a perfectly straight face: 'I don't know if you've ever dissected a rat, but to me, there was only one word for it: exhilarating.'" - Kirkus
This information about The Golden Tresses of the Dead was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Shirley Bradley
Alan Bradley was born in Toronto, Ont. and grew up in the pleasant lakeside town of Cobourg, Ont. After a long career in television broadcasting, he took early retirement from the University of Saskatchewan to write full-time. He has published many children's stories as well as lifestyle and arts columns in Canadian newspapers. His adult stories have been broadcast on CBC radio and published in various literary journals. He has also written several screenplays and taught university-level courses in screenwriting. He was the recipient of the first Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award for Children's Literature. After writing for several years on the Maltese island of Gozo, Alan Bradley now lives on the Isle of Man.
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