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Product Description
Quill & Quire
Flavia Sabina de Luce is mad about chemistry, loves poisons, and is not above dissolving her older sister’s pearls in acid as an act of revenge. Aged 11, she lives with two sisters, her distant and eccentric father, and a couple of retainers in an old manor house in post-Second World War England. She is also the narrator of the first in a planned series of detective novels by Alan Bradley. Flavia tells a pretty good tale. Late one night, she overhears her beloved father arguing with a red-haired man, and before morning she finds the stranger dying in the garden. Whipping around the countryside on her trusty bike, Gladys, she unravels this mystery, as well as others that the local police find puzzling. Is she Harriet the Spy morphed into a detective, or a plucky refugee from any number of British children’s books? Neither, it seems. Although the plot outline sounds like it would appeal to readers in the nine-to-12 age range, Flavia and the series are intended primarily for the adult market. Evidently, the hope is that Flavia will enchant readers the way another unlikely heroine, Alexander McCall Smith’s Precious Ramotswe of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, has. Bradley succeeds in making Flavia’s passion for chemistry believable, but the first part of the book creaks a bit, and the cliff-hangers at the end of each chapter are overdone. An early chapter closes: “Father bent down for a closer look, then gave a little gasp. And suddenly he was clutching at his throat, his hands shaking like aspen leaves in autumn, his face the colour of sodden ashes.” A few pages later, the police inspector says ominously, “Flavia … I’d like a word with you. Inside.” This heavy-handedness may make some readers cross, but those who enjoy a nice puzzle mystery are advised to keep reading. Flavia is a smart girl who figures things out impressively. Whether she’ll also charm a world of adult readers remains to be seen.
Review
"Sure in its story, pace and voice, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie deliciously mixes all the ingredients of great storytelling.The kind of novel you can pass on to any reader knowing their pleasure is assured."
— Andrew Pyper, author of The Killing Circle
"A wickedly clever story, a dead true and original voice, and an English country house in the summer: Alexander McCall Smith meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Please, please, Mr. Bradley, tell me we'll be seeing Flavia again soon?"
— Laurie R. King, New York Times bestselling author of The Game
“One of the hottest reads of 2009.”
— The Times (U.K.)
“Alan Bradley brews a bubbly beaker of fun in his devilishly clever, wickedly amusing debut mystery, launching an eleven-year-old heroine with a passion for chemistry — and revenge! What a delightful, original book!”
— Carolyn Hart, Anthony and Agatha award-winning author of Death Walked In
“Alan Bradley’s marvelous book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, is a fantastic read, a winner. Flavia walks right off the page and follows me through my day. I can hardly wait for the next book. Bravo.”
— Louise Penny, acclaimed author of Still Life
Praise from the CWA Dagger Award judges:
“The most original of the bunch, I think, with a deliciously deceptive opening which really sets the tone of macabre fun. Flavia is a wonderful creation, along with the rest of her eccentric family, and makes for a highly engaging sleuth. Think the Mitfords, as imagined by Dorothy L Sayers. The plot, with its intriguing philatelic elements, is nicely ingenious and delivers a very good end, with a fun twist. Would make very good Sunday night telly, I think.”
“I adored this! Our heroine is refreshingly youthful, funny and sharp and the author creates such a strong sense of time and place. Flavia’s eccentric family are delightful and I love seeing them interact within their crazy home. There are also interesting depths to the plot — the stamp collecting, the chemistry experiments, and the acknowledgement of past events and how they have affected these characters. The author’s tone is very tongue-in-cheek and offers something quite different in this genre, and the story is cleverly structured and beautifully written. This doesn’t read like a first novel. Assuming the mystery itself will be as enticing and smoothly handled as the opening, I can see Flavia solving crimes into adulthood. Great title too!”
“Really adored the voice of the characters in this — especially Flavia, the spirited main protagonist — and the sense of place is beautifully described, particularly when telling the history of the house and its inhabitants. The family unit, comprising of the taciturn, introspective Colonel and his three daughters is well written, humorous and the sibling relationships very realistic. The author should be praised for creating a work that has nostalgic interest as well as a murder mystery, in places this almost reads like an Enid Blyton novel for adults!”
— Andrew Pyper, author of The Killing Circle
"A wickedly clever story, a dead true and original voice, and an English country house in the summer: Alexander McCall Smith meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Please, please, Mr. Bradley, tell me we'll be seeing Flavia again soon?"
— Laurie R. King, New York Times bestselling author of The Game
“One of the hottest reads of 2009.”
— The Times (U.K.)
“Alan Bradley brews a bubbly beaker of fun in his devilishly clever, wickedly amusing debut mystery, launching an eleven-year-old heroine with a passion for chemistry — and revenge! What a delightful, original book!”
— Carolyn Hart, Anthony and Agatha award-winning author of Death Walked In
“Alan Bradley’s marvelous book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, is a fantastic read, a winner. Flavia walks right off the page and follows me through my day. I can hardly wait for the next book. Bravo.”
— Louise Penny, acclaimed author of Still Life
Praise from the CWA Dagger Award judges:
“The most original of the bunch, I think, with a deliciously deceptive opening which really sets the tone of macabre fun. Flavia is a wonderful creation, along with the rest of her eccentric family, and makes for a highly engaging sleuth. Think the Mitfords, as imagined by Dorothy L Sayers. The plot, with its intriguing philatelic elements, is nicely ingenious and delivers a very good end, with a fun twist. Would make very good Sunday night telly, I think.”
“I adored this! Our heroine is refreshingly youthful, funny and sharp and the author creates such a strong sense of time and place. Flavia’s eccentric family are delightful and I love seeing them interact within their crazy home. There are also interesting depths to the plot — the stamp collecting, the chemistry experiments, and the acknowledgement of past events and how they have affected these characters. The author’s tone is very tongue-in-cheek and offers something quite different in this genre, and the story is cleverly structured and beautifully written. This doesn’t read like a first novel. Assuming the mystery itself will be as enticing and smoothly handled as the opening, I can see Flavia solving crimes into adulthood. Great title too!”
“Really adored the voice of the characters in this — especially Flavia, the spirited main protagonist — and the sense of place is beautifully described, particularly when telling the history of the house and its inhabitants. The family unit, comprising of the taciturn, introspective Colonel and his three daughters is well written, humorous and the sibling relationships very realistic. The author should be praised for creating a work that has nostalgic interest as well as a murder mystery, in places this almost reads like an Enid Blyton novel for adults!”
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Most helpful customer reviews
37 of 38 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the most engaging characters I've ever met in a book....,
By
This review is from: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Hardcover)
Oh I loved, loved, loved this book!The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie introduces us to eleven year old Flavia DeLuce. She lives with her father and two sisters in an old mansion in 1950's England. The house is full of nooks and crannies - and a old chemistry lab. Flavia practices making poisons there. (yes poisons!) She and her older sisters are constantly thinking of ways to torment each other. Their eccentric father keeps himself occupied with his philatelic obsession.We are introduced to Flavia in the first paragraph of the novel.... "It was as black in the closet as old blood. They had shoved me in and locked the door. I breathed heavily through my nose, fighting desperately to remain calm. I tried counting to ten on every intake of breath, and to eight as I released each one slowly into the darkness. Luckily for me, they had pulled the gag so tightly into my open mouth that my nostrils were left unobstructed, and I was able to draw in one slow lungful after another of the stale, musty air." Flavia escapes unharmed, but plans to pay her sisters back. However, the appearance of a dead bird with a postage stamp speared through it's beak and her father's horrified reaction distract her. But it is the dead body found in the cucumber patch that really enthralls her. When her father is arrested for the murder, Flavia sets out to solve the crime on her own. Flavia is one of the most endearing, captivating, curious, beguiling, precocious characters I've ever discovered in the pages of a book. The crime is interesting, but it is Flavia's personality that is the real draw for me. "Whenever I'm out of doors and find myself wanting to have a first-rate think, I fling myself down on my back, throw my arms and legs out so that I look like an asterisk, and gaze at the sky. For the first little while, I'm usually entertained by my 'floaters, those wormy little strings of protein that swim to and fro across one's field of vision like dark little galaxies. When I'm not in a hurry, I stand on my head to stir them, up, and then lie back to watch the show, as if it were an animated cinema film." Although the idea of an eleven year old for a protagonist seems unusual for an adult detective novel, it just somehow works. Harriet the Spy for grown ups. (I really wanted to be Harriet when I was younger!) This is the first in a series that Bradley has planned - The Buckshaw Chronicles. I will be on the edge of my seat waiting for the second!
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Winning Young Chemist/Sleuth,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Paperback)
I have a page on LibraryThing (as thefirstalicat), that lists all the books that I own (somewhere around 2200, I think, I forget offhand), a few of which I've taken to reviewing. I also check their "EarlyReview" feature, wherein one can request an early review (pre-publication) copy of a new book and one might be chosen: I've received at least six novels this way, which is lovely! So last month, when Alan Bradley's second Flavia de Luce novel, The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag, to be published March 9th, was offered, I went for it...and got it! But I hadn't read the first novel, one I'd heard of and was interested in last year but never got around to buying until now. That book was The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and it introduces us to 11-year-old Flavia, living in a crumbling mansion in the countryside of England, near the (imaginary) village of Bishop's Lacey, in 1950. A budding young chemist and all-around young-girl sleuth, Flavia is mostly concerned with bedevilling her 17-year-old sister Ophelia ("Feely") and 13-year-old sister Daphne ("Daffy") and, of course, pursuing her chosen passion of poison, er, chemistry, when she overhears an argument between her philatelist (stamp-collector) reclusive father and a stranger; a stranger who, early the very next morning, turns up dead in the family cucumber patch. Where, of course, Flavia finds him just as he is expiring. When her father is arrested for the murder, Flavia leaps into action, determined to find out what really happened....Flavia is an absolute delightful character, and this book I found to be an absolute delight to read - Alan Bradley has a flare for making a subject as dull to me as chemistry into something exotic and fine, and his creation of this young girl, something of a brat but really only toward her older sisters, is as well-imagined and brought to life as any heroine you're likely to find either in the YA or mystery worlds of letters. REALLY highly recommended; I'm just sad I didn't pick it up last year when it first arrived in bookstores!
4.0 out of 5 stars
Add One Part Precocious Girl Detective, One Part Chemistry, and One Part Humor to Make for a Delicious Mystery Treat,
By Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 112,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (#1 HALL OF FAME)
This review is from: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Hardcover)
Alan Bradley has a winner in junior detective, eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, a self-taught chemist who is undaunted in getting her way. I predict that this is the beginning of a remarkable mystery series. If she can do all this at 11, imagine what she'll be able do to at 11 3/4!After a late-night argument with her father, Flavia discovers the blackmailer dying in the yard. To her mind, her absent-minded father is suspect number one. She takes it upon herself to solve the mysteries of what the blackmail was all about, old crimes, and this death. Naturally, everyone wants her out of the way . . . including the murdered. But it takes a lot to slow down Flavia. Merely tying her up won't do it. Whenever a story has a precocious child hero in it, there has to be lots of humor to season the story and make us interested in what's going on rather than being annoyed by the child's smugness. Mr. Bradley clearly understands that and adds a nice light touch throughout. The book opens in a very tight, well-organized way . . . and begins to meander near the middle. With a little more editing down of this material, this source of sweetness could have been a much more memorable one. The plot is delicious in its humorous intricacies that successfully build around postage stamps, chemistry, sleight-of-hand, hiding places, red herrings, and false tales. Clearly, Mr. Bradley has a wonderful imagination. I can't wait for the next book in the series!
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