So in the last three months I have read one book cover to cover that is a “serious” book and will write about it next. One book. Ugh. I have read lots of bits and pieces of other serious books but overall the last three months have been the busiest work months of the last 25 years…3 new projects and a 25th anniversary celebration. It has been hard on reading. I did, however, listen to a bunch of audio recordings of Inspector Montabano mysteries and could have included them but won’t. And I did discover a new series of mysteries thanks to multiple friends. In October I posted on Facebook that I was looking for recommendations for books for fourteen year old girls who were bored by romance novels. Several friends recommended the Flavia de Luce mysteries. I decided to try them out first and quickly fell in love with Flavia. I have read 9 of them now (the 10th is on hold at the library!) but bought some of them so will give myself credit for five.
I remember when many of my friends were reading Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie when it first came out but for whatever reason I never picked it up. It begins the story of Flavia, an 11 year old girl living outside of London in a decaying mansion with her father, his friend/servant/fellow war veteran Dogger, and two miserable sisters in 1950. Her mother has died in Tibet in a climbing accident and her father has essentially checked out to grieve. They have a housekeeper/cook who comes in daily and an assortment of friends from the village. Flavia is an avid chemist with a particular passion for poisons and ends up solving a series of murders, one per book. There is a subplot involving a family tradition of serving in some secret spy service of the British government and both Churchill and the King make appearances in novels.
In some ways these books would work as YA reads but there is a darkness to them too that might make them hard reading depending on your sensibilities/sensitivities. The family is decidedly dysfunctional with two really cruel sisters tormenting Flavia with accusations that she was the cause of their mother’s death and dad really not attending to the girls at all. Dogger suffers horribly from PTSD, the result of terrible treatment in a POW camp in the war. And the family lives in the shadow of bankruptcy and the loss of their ancestral home. Having said this they make great reading when the only time you have to read is while eating a meal or before bed.
60 Before 60 