From Dagger Awardwinning and internationally bestselling author Alan Bradley comes this utterly beguiling mystery starring one of fiction's most remarkable sleuths: Flavia de Luce, a dangerously brilliant eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders. This time, Flavia finds herself untangling two deathsseparated by time but linked by the unlikeliest of threads.
Flavia thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishops Lacy are overand then Rupert Porson has an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. The beloved puppeteer has had his own strings sizzled, but who'd do such a thing and why? For Flavia, the questions are intriguing enough to make her put aside her chemistry experiments and schemes of vengeance against her insufferable big sisters. Astride Gladys, her trusty bicycle, Flavia sets out from the de Luces' crumbling family mansion in search of Bishops Laceys deadliest secrets.
Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than shes letting on? What of the vicar's odd ministrations to the catatonic woman in the dovecote? Then theres a German pilot obsessed with the Brontë sisters, a reproachful spinster aunt, and even a box of poisoned chocolates. Most troubling of all is Porsons assistant, the charming but erratic Nialla. All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can't solvewithout Flavias help. But in getting so close to whos secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head?
"While the plot at times stretches credulity, with some characters veering close to Agatha Christie stereotypes, Flavia is such an entertaining narrator that most readers will cheerfully go along for the ride." - Library Journal
"There's not a reader alive who wouldn't want to watch Flavia in her lab concocting some nefarious brew." - Kirkus Reviews
"Starred Review. Comic and irreverent, this entry is sure to build further momentum for the series." - Publishers Weekly
This information about The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag was first featured
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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.
The first book of his Flavia de Luce series, "The ...
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