The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
A Flavia de Luce Novel
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4.2 • 121 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Flavia is incisive, cutting and hilarious . . . one of the most remarkable creations in recent literature.”—USA Today
Flavia de Luce, a dangerously smart eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders, thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey are over—until beloved puppeteer Rupert Porson has his own strings sizzled in an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. But who’d do such a thing, and why? Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she’s letting on? What about Porson’s charming but erratic assistant? All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can’t solve—without Flavia’s help. But in getting so close to who’s secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head?
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Alan Bradley's A Red Herring Without Mustard, discussion questions, and an essay by the author.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bradley s endlessly entertaining follow-up to 2009 s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie finds precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce once again indulging her curiosity about corpses. Wandering near her threadbare ancestral home in early 1950s England, Flavia bumps into famed TV puppeteer Rupert Porson and his pregnant wife, who have been marooned by an ailing van. While they wait for repairs to be completed, they agree to put on a performance for the village of Bishop s Lacey but Rupert s sudden death ends the show. Feigning an innocence entirely at odds with her shrewdness about adult doings, Flavia uses her skills in chemistry and questioning to puzzle out which of the many possible suspects murdered Rupert and why. The author deftly evokes the period, but Flavia s sparkling narration is the mystery s chief delight. Comic and irreverent, this entry is sure to build further momentum for the series.
