The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

Another Flavia de Luce story.

In this episode, Flavia gets tangled up with a travelling puppet show. During one of the shows, the puppetmaster is electrocuted. Flavia automatically figures out that it was murder and is off on the quest to find the murderer again. Aunt Felicity comes to stay and is fairly harsh, but she leaves Flavia with an excellent piece of advice:

“If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one’s self is like the heat in an oven. It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world.” 

I still love Flavia throughout this story and the book was still very well written, but I do have to say that this book was a bit boring. There wasn’t the sense of adventure that The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie had. I was a bit disappointed. It took a lot longer to get to the actual murder in this book and then she seemed to really dally with Aunt Felicity. I was looking forward to the more adventurous Flavia (getting kidnapped and breaking into a library for information), when Flavia really just had conversations with people and figured the murder out on her own. I think I would have liked this book more if The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie hadn’t come before it. I just had really high expectations. And it’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy this book. I did. Just not as much as the previous one.

I can definitely tell though that Flavia is a character that the author has no control over. She has her own mind and will not be forced. She is a character that just slips right out of the author’s pen. It's really funny to read his interviews on her, particularly this one about halfway down the page: An Essay by Alan Bradley

I’ve heard mixed reviews on the third book, A Red Herring Without Mustard, so I’ll have to try and read it without any preconceived notions. I think that The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is just a very hard act to follow.