“The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane’s heart.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (JUL 18, 2011)

Odysseus was a legendary and cunning hero on a journey to find home, and lived by his guile. Annie Oakley was a sharpshooter with an epic aim, living by her wits. Siddhartha traveled on a spiritual quest to find himself, and defined the river by its timelessness—always changing, always the same. Now, in Bonnie Jo Campbell’s adventure story, we are introduced to sixteen-year-old Margo Crane, gutsy, feisty survivor who manifests a flawed blend of all three heroes, who lives once and inexorably upon a river.

Raised on the Stark River by throwback hicks (some who are rich) in rural Murrayville, Michigan, Margo can shoot and skin a buck, fish like Papa Hemingway, and fire a bullet clean through a rabbit’s eye. She’s a free spirit, a river sprite, a dog lover, an oarswoman and a woodcutter. Her heroine is Annie Oakley, a renowned figure that she hopes to embody.

A series of incidents in Margo’s young life cause her to run away. Her beloved grandfather dies, and her mother—who never adapted to the river life—abandons the family. At fifteen, Margo is raped by her Uncle Cal, but is more perplexed than traumatized when it happens.

“Rape sounded like a quick and violent act, like making a person empty her wallet at the point of a knife, like shooting someone or stealing a TV. What Cal had done was gentler, more personal, like passing a virus.”

It takes a year for Margo to comprehend that she was violated; circumstances eventually culminate in a baroque twist on a Mexican standoff–with one dead body, one tip-shot pecker, and one pissed off family. She quits school, grabs her Marlin .22, boards her rowboat, and heads up river with her mother’s address found under her father’s bed. She is determined to reunite with her mother and forge a new life.

Margo likes to hear the water rustle against the rocks; sleep under a canopy of stars; watch the pink dawn of the sky; listen to whip-poor-wills call from the trees; and count blue herons as they wade in the river. But her journey is tangled by an undertow of complications, a ripple effect of the sand and silt and muddiness she brought with her from Murrayville and continues to accumulate. Margo has a ripe sexuality, a flood of pheromones and hormones coursing through the channels of her body like a tidal wave. As she paddles upstream, she bounces from one man to the next, (lying about her age), leaving a wake of misadventures at each stop, with minimal contemplation between disasters. With each imbroglio, she unwittingly tugs at the past, pulling it into the present and future, like floating debris that follows along.

The reader is enticed to root for Margo, but I was turned off by her attraction to losers and drunks and skeptical of extremes in her nature. The commando girl power was redundant—she was a superwoman of courage and resolve, and when it was favorable, she would vulnerably depend on the kindness of strangers, who appeared at convenient times. She also inflicts some irreparable damage to a menacing one-eye-blind man from the recent past—his brute strength was reminiscent of the Cyclops in the Odyssey–and then wipes her hands of it with too much nonchalance.

The adventures lack variety or surprise–Margo’s marvel trick shots often gild the lily, and whatever a grown man can do, she can do better. Her noble relationship with Smoke, an elderly, smelly, chain-smoking, wheelchair-bound hermit with emphysema, is supposed to be the pinnacle of the story, but it reeked of authorial manipulation. Margos’ beneficence is obviously meant to offset her other transgressions, which only calls attention to the incredulity of this relationship. When she climbs in bed (platonically) and sleeps with Smoke as an act of virtuous love, it came off as orchestrated. Smoke ultimately became a plot/story device, rewarding Margo with the right things at the right time.

Despite the obvious flaws, Campbell’s story is a page-turner. Her prose is warm, rollicking, and natural. She conveys a spiritual power to the river and surrounding environs, massaging the narrative with the raw power of nature. Margo is earthy, plucky, and engaging, a passionate heroine with a physical, sensual nature and double-barrel gaze. The loose ends in this story imply that a series is in the works, or a follow-up novel.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 13 readers
PUBLISHER:	W. W. Norton & Company (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Bonnie Jo Campbell
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: American Salvage

Bibliography:

• Women and Other Animals (1999)
• Q Road (2002)
• American Salvage (April 2009)
• Once Upon a River (July 2011)

“Years ago, she’d taught herself never to forget that everyone in her late-night world wanted something from her: a drink or two, a name and a number, a subtle stroke or an obvious grope, forgiveness for spilling or spewing or stepping out of line, a hit of blow or a blow job in the back-seat. They wanted to be seen and heard through the lights and above the noise any way… Everyone in her life, Maureen knew, was a buyer or a seller, usually both, all the time. That fact was the cornerstone on which she’d built her survival. Hers was not a world where a girl could let her guard down. For anyone. Ever.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (JUN 11, 2011)

Physically, 29 year-old Maureen Coughlin is a wisp of a woman, 5’ 4” tall and 100 pounds. Emotionally, she’s a powerhouse, a person with acumen, tenacity, and a wild streak just this side of the Serengeti. She works as a waitress, the same job for the last 10 years and she’s just sick of it. It’s a nowhere job and she’s going nowhere. She lives and works on Staten Island in a faux chic bar with the emphasis on “faux.” She’s started college and dropped out more than once but she knows that waitressing is not where she wants to find herself down the pike. She lives alone and has no one special in her life except her mother who gives her more trouble than solace.

She’s not averse to starting her shifts with a drink and a bit of cocaine to get her going. For a while she had a pretty bad cocaine problem but she’s kicked that. Now, her use is just recreational. Her alcohol consumption, however, is pretty heavy. As The Devil She Knows opens, Maureen is just coming off her shift. It’s near morning and she’s strung out and in a black-out, not even realizing where she is. She finds herself in Dennis’s, her boss’s, office. As she leaves the office she sees Dennis on his knees giving a blow job to Frank Sebastian, candidate for State Senate. She pretends she’s seen nothing and leaves hoping that will be the end of it. Maureen is discreet and knows when to keep a secret. However, the next morning Dennis is found dead, ostensibly a suicide on the railroad tracks. Maureen believes it’s not a suicide because just before she was leaving the bar, Dennis told her he wanted to talk to her. Also, she knows Dennis is not the type to take his life. Now she’s in a real quandary.

She approaches John, her ex-boss at the bar she used to work at. He encourages her to call the cops and gives her the name of one that he trusts as honest and good. It just so happens though that Waters, the cop, has a history with Sebastian. They used to work together in Brooklyn. Something happened that caused Sebastian to retire as a hero and Waters to be transferred to Staten Island. Waters is old and tired. Maureen thinks of him as a lumbering great bear. Maureen confides in him and tells him what happened between Dennis and Sebastian. Waters promises to work on it. He takes her allegations and suspicions very seriously.

What Maureen hadn’t anticipated, however, is just how bad a guy Sebastian is. He is really bad, no shades of gray here. He has killed before and he has killed many people. Maureen finds her apartment broken into, her television smashed, and warning cards laid carefully under her mattress. Sebastian is not a light-weight and Maureen knows she’s in deep trouble. Waters advises her to lay low and stay at her mother’s house. Maureen doesn’t like taking advice or orders. She likes to take things into her own hands and her brain is telling her to find Sebastian and face off.

The book’s plot is pretty basic in its David and Goliath theme – little woman against big and powerful man. However, it’s well-written, has great quips and kept up my interest throughout. Maureen is a wonderful character. The reader feels like they really know her, along with the others who surround her. The author, Bill Loehfelm, is great with building a character from scratch. We get a real sense of everyone in the book and the characters are all there for a purpose – no loose ends and no rabbit trails.

When the confrontation comes, and we know it will come, we’re all rooting for Maureen. Bill Loefelm started his career as the first Amazon Breakthrough writer, winning their award for his novel Fresh Kills. It appears that The Devil She Knows is the first in a series starring Maureen. I look forward to the subsequent books.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 3 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux (May 24, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Bill Loehfelm
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Missing Persons by Claire O’Donohue

Bibliography:

• Fresh Kills (2008)
• Bloodroot (2009)

Maureen Coughlin series:

• The Devil She Knows (May 2011)

“Carefully, I injected each chocolate with a drop or two of the stuff, touching the injection site with a glass rod (slightly warmed in the Bunsen burner) to smooth over the little hole.

“I had carried out the procedure so perfectly that only the faintest whiff of rotten egg reached my nostrils. Safe inside the gooey centers, the hydrogen sulfide would remain cocooned, invisible, unsuspected, until Feely —

“Flavia!”

Book Review:

Review by Kirstin Merrihew (MAR 8, 2010)

Young Flavia Sabina de Luce, chemistry whiz, accomplished amateur detective, and sometime drama queen, is back! She says she trying to be a better person, but she still at least thinks rude retorts, forgets to come home for Mrs. Mullet’s strange meals, steals into houses and businesses to collect evidence, opens coffins and peers inside to confirm forensic theories, and gives as good as she gets to her older sisters.

It remains 1950, and the Bonepenny murder is no distant memory yet. Thoughts of what it means to die occupy Flavia’s vivid imagination in the churchyard on a particular summer day, and she thinks she is alone until she hears sobbing. Of course, she investigates. Soon she is acquainted with famous BBC puppeteer Rupert Porson and his assistant, Nialla. Their van has broken down and their tuppence in hand don’t stretch enough for the repairs. The vicar suggests they give a couple performances in Bishop’s Lacey to earn cash, and they agree. After more than a day of preparations, with which Flavia helps, the matinee goes off without a hitch. However, the evening’s “Jack and the Beanstalk” ends shockingly. Flavia, of course, can’t leave the police work to Inspector Hewitt and his stalwarts. Using her own brand of cunning, coy charm; she ferrets out local history that could give motive to murder. The “misadventure death” of a five–year-old in 1945 becomes part of her inquiries, as does the story of the German prisoner of war who still works on a local farm. Flavia applies her wits (and her wit), her kid’s energy, and her scientific genius to get at the truth.

The mysteries in The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag arguably don’t quite match, in complexity or intensity, those in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. I expected a few more revelations than actually materialized. This second Flavia book, however, provides more opportunities to get to know this remarkable character and those around her. Dogger, the family factotum, demonstrates that when he’s lucid, he can keep stride with Flavia in the deduction department. Haviland de Luce, Flavia’s father, who mainly exerts parental privilege to keep his youngest daughter from constantly disappearing, still has a tendency to mentally retire in uncomfortable situations. But he can defend his daughters when pushed — although seldom against each other. He also tells Flavia to look past the surface when it comes to his visiting sister.

One of the warmest, most insightful scenes in Weed is an unlikely conversation between Flavia and said paternal sister. Flavia usually thinks Aunt Felicity oppressive and odd, but when the girl asks what her mother was like, Felicity tells her, “Good heavens, child! If you want to see your mother, you have no more than to look in the glass. If you want to know her character, look inside yourself. You’re so much like her it gives me the willies.” Then Felicity urges to Flavia to listen to her own inspiration. “You must let your inner vision be your Pole Star,” she tells her. “Even if it leads to murder?” Flavia boldly asks. Her aunt assures her yes. Flavia wants to throw her arms around “this dotty old bat in her George Bernard Shaw costume and hug her until the juices [run] out.” But a de Luce has much more British reserve than that. So, Flavia settles for telling her, “Thank you, Aunt Felicity…You’re a brick.”

The generally unhurried pace of this novel allows for such enjoyable interludes. Another one occurs when the family gathers to listen to music on the wireless. Some are less comforting however:  Her sisters’ unkindness to her almost jumps the shark here. In fact, the Flavia/Cinderella comparison, which she invokes, feels quite appropriate. In Sweetness, we knew the sisters feuded unmercifully, but it seemed more in fun than it does in this sequel. Although Flavia once again sets out to “poison” them, her humanity is not really in doubt. Feely and Daffy, however, go too far on at least one occasion.

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag is, happily, rife with examples of Flavia’s indomitable and often acidic sense of humor.When Nialla says Flavia looks like the kind of kid who smokes, the girl is actually dumbfounded. But she quickly recovers and gamely flings back, “I was thinking of taking it up next week….I just hasn’t actually got round to it yet.”

Amusingly, Flavia tells the reader, “I have never much cared for flippant remarks, especially when others make them, and in particular, I don’t give a frog’s fundament for them when they come from an adult. It has been my experience that facetiousness in the mouth of someone old enough to know better is often no more than camouflage for something far, far worse.” A successful detective has to be able to read people, and Flavia does quite well for someone either already or nearly eleven years old. She is terribly precocious — sometimes too knowing to be believed. But she does have limits — as when she goes to Dogger to ask about what “having an affair” really means. Poor old Dogger. What will he say?

This mystery also provides Flavia with plenty of opportunities to slip away to the handsomely equipped lab handed down through Uncle Tar and then her mother. Observing Flavia test someone’s bodily fluids or isolating a gas is great fun. Even outside the lab and in a terrible pinch, she can roust ingredients needed to be open to a charge of, in the words of Inspector Hewitt: “practicing medicine without a license.”

This second in the Flavia series follows the form of the first by creating interesting psychological portraits. What does make Nialla stay with a man who gives her black and blue marks? How is a man with a wasted limb from infantile paralysis (polio) marked inwardly by his disability? How does he live with his chronic pain? Why does the German POW, Dieter, speak nearly perfect English, and why hasn’t he been shipped back to Germany? What hidden talents lurk within Mad Meg? Is she really delusional? What might a farmer want to keep secret about his crops? What happens to the psyche of a mother whose only child dies tragically? How do a minister of God and his wife balance the needs of the parishioners against their own? Should a “blue-blood” teenager go all crushy for a man who wore an enemy uniform only five years ago? These, and many other human questions are raised.

Author Alan Bradley, besides liberally sprinkling in culture and chemistry, doesn’t neglect to weave in a small, new plot point about stamps, a salute to the previous case that brought Flavia (and himself) fame. The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag is a superior and lovely cozy mystery. Bring on Flavia #3, Mr. Bradley. Oh, and if Flavia gets to investigate her own mother’s death in it or another future novel, so much the better.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 213 readers
PUBLISHER:	Delacorte Press (March 9, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Alan Bradley
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Bibliography:

• Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (April 2009)
• The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag (April 2009)
• A Red Herring Without Mustard (February 2011)
• I Am Half Sick of Shadows (November 2011)

“We were all at the mercy of chance, no matter how confident we felt, hostages to our own human frailty. And that applied not only to people, but to countries too. Things could go wrong and entire nations could be led into a world of living nightmare; it had happened, and was happening still. Poor Africa; it did not deserve the things that had been done to it. Africa, that could stand for love and happiness and joy, could also be a place of suffering and shame.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Mary Whipple (MAY 27, 2009)

Not a believer that change is entirely for the better in Botswana society, Mma Precious Ramotswe, the “traditionally built” owner of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency in Gaborone, has decided that cars are among the biggest agents of change, making people lazy. She has therefore decided to walk the two miles each way to her office, located beside the garage where her husband Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni operates a car repair service. She secretly admits, however, that the real reason she is walking is that her beloved little white van, now twenty-two years old, is making strange noises, and she fears that when Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni hears them that he will decide her little van can no longer be repaired.

Focusing on relationships and the patterns of politeness that make good communication flourish, the novel, though ostensibly a mystery, is filled with warm, homey touches—the giggling of Motholeli, Mma Ramotswe’s wheelchair-bound foster child, when she plays with her friends; Mma’s need to urge the children to do their homework; her foster son Puso’s love of football (like the passionate love for football among all her other male acquaintances); her protectiveness toward her husband; her need to make Mma Grace Makutsi, her assistant at the detective agency, a little more flexible about what she believes to be “the rules”; and her empathy toward Fanwell, a young apprentice who works for Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni and supports five other family members.

Her innate kindness toward others, and the belief that “there is plenty of work for love to do,” dominate all aspects of Mma Ramotswe’s life, because, she believes, “We [are] all at the mercy of chance… When we dismiss or deny the hopes of others…we forget that they, like us, have only one chance in this life.” Her husband, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, is just as thoughtful, donating one day every two weeks to help a needy friend keep abreast of the work that is piling up in his shop. As always he keeps the machinery at the local orphanage in working order, even when it is costly to himself.

More sentimental and less dependent upon plot than some of the earlier novels in this endearing series, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built intersperses local stories, gossip, and legends among several (sometimes thin) plot lines—Mma Ramotswe’s love for her little white van and her unhappiness about its possible future; a mysterious case of the Kalahari Swoopers, a great football team that is losing too many games, a particular worry for its owner, Mr. Molofololo; the fate of the romance between Mma Grace Makutsi and her fiancé, Mr. Phuti Radiphuti, after he hires Violet Sephotho to work in his furniture shop; and the case of a woman who is trying to live with two husbands.

Characters familiar to readers of earlier novels also make their appearances here. Charlie, the apprentice mechanic for Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, still does not like to work, if he can avoid it, but he plays a key role in resolving one of the plot lines. Glamorous Violet Sephotho, a poor student at the secretarial college where Grace Makutsi earned 97% on her final exam, lies about her exam scores to get a job with Phuti Radiphuti, intending to use her considerable charms to steal him away from his fiancée Grace. Mr. Polopetsi, a man saved from disaster in a previous novel, and who now works for Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, helps out at the detective agency and offers advice to Mma Ramotswe. And Mma Potokwane, who runs a large orphanage, drifts in and out of the action here, too, always in need of help.

“Cozy,” in the warmest sense of the word, the novel makes readers feel good about life, about principled women like Mma Ramotswe, about the pace of life which allows people to slow down or stop in order to be kind to others, and about the value of communication and good will in the solving of big problems. Whereas Mma Makutsi believes that “The trouble with this country [is] that there are too many people sitting down in other people’s chairs,” Mma Ramotswe believes that “if a chair is empty, then anybody should be welcome to sit in it…Maybe the real problem with the modern world,” she emphasizes, “[is] that not enough of us [are] prepared to share our chairs.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 163 readers
PUBLISHER:	Pantheon (April 21, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Mary Whipple
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Alexander McCall Smith
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Lots!  Read reviews of: The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party The Unbearable Lightness of Scones other books in this series The 44 Scotland St. series

Bibliography:

• Children of Wax: African Folk Tales (1991)
• Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations (1995)
• The Girl Who Married a Lion: and Other Tales from Africa (2004)
• Trains and Lovers (June 2013)
• The Forever Girl (February 2014)

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series:

• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (1999)
• Tears of the Giraffe (2000)
• Morality for Beautiful Girls (2001)
• The Kalahari Typing School for Men (2002)
• The Full Cupboard of Life (2004)
• In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (2004)
• Blue Shoes and Happiness (2006)
• The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (2007)
• The Miracle at Speedy Motors (April 2008)
• Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (2009)
• The Double Comfort Safari Club (2010)
• The Saturday Big Tent Wedding (2011))
• The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection (2012)
• The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (October 2013)

44 Scotland Street

• 44 Scotland Street (2005)
• Expresso Tales 2006)
• Love Over Scotland (2007)
• The World According to Bertie (2008)
• The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (2010)
• Sunshine on Scotland Street (2012)
• Bertie’s Guide to Life and Mothers (July 2013)
• Bertie Plays the Blues (October 2013)

Portuguese Irregular Verbs Series:

• Portuguese Irregular Verbs (2004)
• The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs (2004)
• At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances (2004)
• The 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom (2005)

Isabel Dalhousie Mystery:

• The Sunday Philosophy Club (2004)
• Friends, Lovers, Chocolate (2005)
• The Right Attitude to Rain (2006)
• The Careful Use of Compliments (2007)
• Comforts of a Muddy Saturday (2008)
• The Lost Art of Gratitude (2009)
• The Charming Quirks of Others (2010)

Children’s Books:

• The Perfect Hamburger (1982)
• Alix and the Tigers (1988)
• Film Boy (1989)
• Uncle Gangster (1989)
• The Tin Dog (1990)
• Suzy Magician (1990)
• Jeffery’s Joke Machine (1990)
• Akimbo and the Elephants (1990)
• Calculator Annie (1991)
• Harriet Bean and the League of Cheats (1991)
• The Girl Who Changed the Weather (1991)
• The Popcorn Pirates (1991)
• The Spaghetti Tangle (1991)
• The Doughnut Ring (1992)
• Springy Jane (1992)
• Akimbo and the Lions (1992)
• Who Invented Peanut Butter? (1993)
• My Chameleon Uncle (1993)
• Paddy and the Ratcatcher (1994)
• Akimbo and the Crocodile Man (1995)
• The Muscle Machine (1995)
• Billy Rubbish (1995)
• The Bubblegum Tree (1996)
• Bursting Balloons Mystery (1997)
• The Five Lost Aunts of Harriet Bean (1997)
• Chocolate Money Mystery (1999)
• Teacher Trouble (2000)
• Monkey Boy (2000)

Other:

• The Criminal Law of Botswana
• Changing People: The Law and Ethics of Behavior Modification (1994)
• Health Resources and the Law (1994)
• Forensic Aspects of Sleep (1997)

Movies from books:

• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Season 1 (2008)

“I still shivered with joy whenever I thought of the rainy autumn day that Chemistry had fallen into my life.

I had been scaling the bookcases in the library, pretending I was a noted Alpinist, when my foot slipped and a heavy book was knocked to the floor….

The book’s title was AN ELEMENTARY STUDY OF CHEMISTRY, and within moments it had taught me that the word iodine comes from a word meaning ‘violet.’ and that the name bromine was derived from a Greek word meaning ‘a stench.’ These were the sorts of things I needed to know! I slipped the fat red volume under my sweater and took it upstairs, and it wasn’t until later that I noticed the name H.de Luce written on the flyleaf. The book had belonged to Harriet.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Kirstin Merrihew (APR 28, 2009)

It is 1950. At Buckshaw, her family’s old country estate, wronged Flavia de Luce (what a musical name) is out for vengeance and poison is her weapon of choice. This eleven-year-old British girl, whose passion is unquestionably “the central science,” has access to a thoroughly outfitted lab, and plenty of plants in the garden from which to distill gleaming liquids of wicked retribution. Her older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne (young women with distinct passions of their own), currently stand squarely in her cross hairs and have consequently made themselves scarce!

Flavia goes to eat before finishing her sisterly (and perhaps just) counterblow in their ongoing feud. Already seated at the dining table is the Colonel who generally treats his three daughters with benign neglect, saving his attentiveness for philately (his “sticky treasures,” Flavia says). Their loyal handyman, Dogger, who still suffers from war terrors, presumably putters outside somewhere. And Mrs. Mullet, the cook, bakes them “pus-like custard pies.” Later on this mundane Buckshaw day, Mrs. Mullet opens the kitchen door to the outside and lets “out a sudden shriek.” A dead bird, a jack snipe, lies on the doorstep. Speared on its beak is a postage stamp. Colonel de Luce rushes over to look. And suddenly his face drains to “the color of sodden ashes.” Flavia, of course, is on her father’s heels and, seeing his reaction, she says “her spine turned to ice,” fearing her father could keel over from a heart attack.

Soon, she is caught up in a mystery of schoolboy memories, rare orange stamps, and murder. Flavia rides her trusty bicycle, Gladys, to talk to nearby village residents (arguably, the tale lags a trifle when she is snooping in Bishop’s Lacey), research theories at the local library, and visit someone jailed. She even helps the police inspector determine the murder victim’s cause of death. Will she be able to turn up all the pieces of the puzzles before her? More importantly, will she put them together as expertly as she can reel off a chemical formula or brew noxious concoctions? And above all, what will she do if her “meddling” puts her in mortal danger too? Would she be able to hold her own with villains better than she does with her infuriating sisters?

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a positively delightful romp. Alan Bradley’s sprightly prose is sharply observant and yet often funny too: at one point, Flavia remembers a piece of Ophelia’s bullseye advice, ” ‘If ever you’re accosted by a man…kick him in the Casanovas and run like the blue blazes!’ ” Trouble is, still pre-pubescent Flavia doesn’t “know where the Casanovas [are] located.” Of course, Bradley’s Flavia is highly precocious intellectually, but she is still unschooled about many aspects of human nature — perhaps, aside from her age, because her mother, Harriet, isn’t around to dispense maternal advice and encouragement. This endears Flavia all the more as a character one expects will take more literary bows. Told entirely from her perspective, this novel doesn’t neglect to portray the adults as rounded and complicated people. Some novels, mysteries particularly, suffer from too many stick characters whose token duty it is to play red herring on the “whodunit” suspect list. Bradley might have made the identity of a major culprit a mite easy to spot, but he doesn’t scrimp on fleshing out most denizens of his novel. Flavia’s sisters take only a few bows of their own in this inaugural tale, but they are definite individuals who perhaps will take more in future volumes.

Basking in the enjoyment of this language-and-idea-rich mystery (a fine candidate for reading aloud, by the way), I was reminded at the perimeter of awareness of Jeanne Birdsall’s The Penderwicks (both books do superior jobs of telling a story of children that adults can enjoy), Laurie R. King’s The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (here the similarity lies in young people devoted to scientific learning), and a 1950’s Astrid Lindgren book entitled Bill Bergson, Master Detective (Flavia and Bill are both courageous and smart young investigators).

For anyone (young, or not so young) who hankers after a satisfying and credible mystery and appreciates that the prime detective is a feisty girl of many talents and emotions, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is the book to spoon or fork up and devour. Real pie can’t hit the spot any better.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 650 readers
PUBLISHER:	Delacorte Press (April 28, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Alan Bradley
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag

Bibliography:

• Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (2009)
• The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag (2010)
• A Red Herring Without Mustard (2011)
• I Am Half Sick of Shadows (November 2011)