The story opens with the immortal words 'I was lying dead in the churchyard' (spoken, astonishingly, by Flavia herself), and ends with a funeral watched by the De Luce family on a newly installed television set. In between, Alan Bradley weaves a hauntingly nightmarish tale that involves Punch & Judy - and in particular Mr Punch's nemesis, the hangman, Jack Ketch - a frighteningly realistic puppet show and a hitherto unexplored corner of Bishop's Lacey known as Gibbet's Wood. The plot, beginning with the arrival in Bishop's Lacey of a travelling puppet show, features a grisly murder during a performance of Jack and the Beanstalk in the village hall and reaches back to an earlier, even nastier crime centring on an ancient, rotting gibbet that has lain like a shadow over the village for years. For Flavia, undoing the complex knot that ties these strands together will test her precocious powers of deduction to the limit - and provide a shocking insight into some of the darker corners of the adult world.
While contemplating her own funeral Flavia de Luce discovers a woman crying behind a headstone. Nialla, is the assistant to the famed puppeteer Rupert Porson whose traveling vehicle has just gone out on them. They are given assistance and accommodations during their stay and in return will put on a show for the village of Bishop's Lacey. Unfortunately, their performance of Jack and the Beanstalk goes horribly wrong with the puppeteer coming to his demise rather than the giant. Flavia's fascination with death and refusal to follow the rules, enlists herself into the investigation and begins linking up this current murder to that of a small boy who was found hanging in the woods some years earlier.
Flavia is such a precocious child that you can't help but love her and route her on from the sidelines. One thing that I found very interesting about The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag is that a times it didn't even feel like a mystery, the back story of the novel's characters is so intriguing that at times I forgot there was another murder that needed solving. Although, unlike the first in this series, Flavia didn't use her chemistry skills as much to put together clues as in her previous case, but instead focused on poisoning her oldest sister Ophelia with chocolates sent by an admirer. In the end all the pieces of the puzzle are put together and the strings neatly tied, equaling a fun and clever story.
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29 October, 2010:
Reviewed