This is a rich fruitcake of a book, chock-full of choice morsels, drenched in heartening spirit! If you've read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie you'll know what I'm on about because the excellent Flavia de Luce, eleven-year-old master chemist, poisons expert and sleuth to be reckoned with, has returned in Alan Bradley's The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag, and it does not disappoint.
If you're unfamiliar with Flavia, she lives (in 1950) in a large but crumbling house on the edge of the English village of Bishop's Lacey. Her mother met a tragic but somewhat mysterious end when she was a baby - and I hope this back story will be developed as the series continues - so she is growing up with her emotionally distant father, two beastly sisters and various family retainers for company, but she's rarely on the back foot, being a girl of sharp intelligence, ingenuity, and encyclopedic knowledge.
When master showman Rupert Porson, famous creator of television's "Magic Kingdom" and Snoddy the Squirrel, is murdered during a puppetry performance at the village hall, Flavia gets involved. What was the dead man's connection with the Inglebys of Culverhouse Farm? Could the vicar, possibly, have ...? And what did Mad Meg really see in Gibbet Wood?
All will be revealed, of course, as the intricate plot unfolds, but there is such period charm to the book, and the precocious Flavia is so original a character, that on all fronts it's a joy to read from start to finish!
