NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A finger in a wedding cake is only the beginning in this deliciously shocking mystery featuring Flavia de Luce, “the world’s greatest adolescent British chemist/busybody/sleuth” (The Seattle Times).
Although it is autumn in the small English town of Bishop’s Lacey, the chapel is decked with exotic flowers. Yes, Flavia de Luce’s sister Ophelia is at last getting hitched, like a mule to a wagon. “A church is a wonderful place for a wedding,” muses Flavia, “surrounded as it is by the legions of the dead, whose listening bones bear silent witness to every promise made at the altar.” Flavia is not your normal twelve-year-old girl. An expert in the chemical nature of poisons, she has solved many mysteries, sharpening her considerable detection skills to the point where she had little choice but to turn professional. So Flavia and dependable Dogger, estate gardener and sounding board extraordinaire, set up shop at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, eager to serve—not so simple an endeavor with her odious little moon-faced cousin, Undine, constantly underfoot. But Flavia and Dogger persevere. Little does she know that their first case will be extremely close to home, beginning with an unwelcome discovery in Ophelia’s wedding cake: a human finger.
Praise for The Golden Tresses of the Dead
“Delightful . . . The mysteries in Mr. Bradley’s books are engaging, but the real lure is Ms. de Luce, the irreverent youngster.”—The Wall Street Journal
“A ghoulish question is at the heart of Bradley’s excellent tenth Flavia de Luce novel. . . . Bradley, who has few peers at combining fair-play clueing with humor and has fun mocking genre conventions, shows no sign of running out of ideas.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
The Golden Tresses of the Dead is the tenth (!!) book in the Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley. Released 22nd Jan 2019 by Penguin on their Delacorte imprint, it's 352 delightful pages and available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audio formats.
Flavia is a force of nature. For readers who are unfamiliar with the series, she's a precocious, sometimes ghoulish, chemistry obsessed 12 year old (at this point in the series), who uses her prodigious intellect (and her brawny family retainer Dogger) to solve crimes.
The premise could so easily tip over into maudlin or saccharine cutesy. It balances on the knife edge throughout and Flavia (and Dogger) are -so- readable and engaging that any new addition to the series is a cause for jubilation. By the 10th book, a lot of series' quality control seems to go out the window, sadly. This series has maintained a high standard throughout and in my opinion, The Golden Tresses of the Dead has turned out to be one of my favorites.
Since it's the latest book in a fairly large series, I would recommend some familiarity before reading this book. There's a lot of background info and character development which have gone before which won't be understood without picking up at least some of the previous installments. It's not an absolute requirement of course, the author's skillful enough to make each of these books a self contained read, but the experience will undoubtedly be enhanced.
Five stars. This is probably my current favorite mystery series, bar none.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
