Play Book Tag discussion

Upon her return to England after being expelled from Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in Canada, Flavia de Luce finds that things have changed in Buckshaw, the family's deteriorating estate. Her father has been hospitalized with pneumonia and she can't find her best friend, Esmeralda. Her sisters Ophelia and Daphne are as remote as usual and her obnoxious orphaned cousin, Undine, is still there.

On the way to visit the vicar’s wife, Flavia agrees to deliver a note to a reclusive wood carver named Roger Sambridge. When he doesn't answer the door, Flavia just can't keep from investigating. She soon finds him hanging upside down, hooked on the back of the door in the shape of a human X. She decides to investigate the crime scene before calling Inspector Hewitt and discovers a set of Oliver Inchbold’s Crispian Crumpet children’s books, which strikes her as odd.

I think Flavia is one of those characters that readers either love or can't stand. She's an extremely precocious, amusing, irritating, budding twelve-year-old chemist and occasional detective. The mystery is more the center of the story here than in some of the previous books in the series, and many of my favorite characters were missing this time around. This wasn't my favorite book in the series, but Jayne Entwistle is fantastic at bringing the story to life. She is the perfect voice of Flavia without overwhelming the story at all. I always enjoy my time with Flavia.