Peachy Reads

I really think this series finds its stride with the third installment. Family characters are developed a bit more, the reader is provided with a little more backstory, and Flavia’s impertinent investigations are reined in somewhat by the adults she is always running circles around-- which seems only credible when you’re talking about a precocious eleven-year-old. I liked the plot of Red Herring , complete with a fringe religion, a crystal-ball gazing gypsy, underground mazes, and a ne’re-do-well who is killed by a lobster pick dispatched up the nose and hung up on an oversized statue of Poseidon on the grounds of Buckshaw. If anything, the plot may be a bit too elaborate, but in the end it all seems to work, and I’m becoming ever more smitten with young Flavia. Now I'll have to find something else to read while waiting for Flavia to return.

The second installment of the Flavia de Luce franchise reintroduces the reader to what may be the most original sleuth since Precious Ramotswe . If you can swallow the premise of a precocious 11-year-old in an impossibly twee English village, racing around on her bicycle, conducting advanced chemistry experiments in her family's treasure home, and solving complex murder investigations that confound the local constabulary, well this is the series for you. That description may make it sound a bit too like Nancy Drew meets Masterpiece Theatre... but don't get me wrong, because it does work as an engaging crime novel. And it's clearly not written for an eleven-year- old reader either . There's something about the nostalgia of the Agatha Christie settings and the aura of the English idyll that makes this series irresistible , at least to non-British readers. Apparently language and cultural inconsistencies introduced by Canadian writer Alan Bradley are jarring if you grew...