It is their ability to survive and thrive, however eccentrically, that enchants us now as it gave us hope when we were children. They have been left to carry on as best they can and each of the de Luce sisters has fashioned a life for herself: Ophelia, self-obsessed but brilliantly musical, Daphne, immersed in the books she finds in the ancestral library, and Flavia, in love with chemistry, apprentice poisoner, and budding detective. Like so many of the best books of that period, the children are half-orphans, with a dead mother and an incompetent father. Nominally the books are set shortly after the Second World War, but they could as easily be set just after, or even just before, the First. What Alan Bradley manages to pull off so well (and remember, he's a fairly elderly Canadian gentleman who is said never to have set foot in England before writing THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE) is to create a little world that has its basis only in books, those books that we plunged into, heart and soul, when were eleven too. So I have given some thought to what it is about them that is so beguiling. And if I had not delightedly devoured all three of Flavia's adventures to date, I might have counted myself among their number. No doubt there is a hardened group of readers to whom the very idea of a mystery series featuring an eleven-year-old heroine with a bicycle named Gladys and an obsession with chemistry would rank right up there with talking kitties in the twee sweepstakes. Or rather, mysteries, because at least one other lurks behind the violence of the present moment. And for those who have been following intrepid eleven-year-old Flavia's career from the beginning, even less surprising that she will follow the trail, however confused, that leads to a solution to the mystery. So it should come as no surprise that when Flavia finds yet another dead body on the Buckshaw grounds, it is danglng from a statue of Poseidon. Not to speak of the names the de Luce sisters hurl at one another - shrimp, prawn, and porpoise, among others - and of course, the Buckshaw housekeeper's name is Mrs Mullet. There's a fishy odour in the caravan where a Gypsy fortuneteller is found seriously injured. Then there's the silver lobster pick, part of the de Luce family plate, which turns up where it shouldn't. First, there's the smell rising off of Brookie Harewood, Bishop's Lacey's "riffraff" and presumed remittance man. Something is decidedly fishy both in Bishop's Lacey and at Buckshaw, the de Luce family estate.
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