The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley – That’s What I’m Talking About…
Audiobook review: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
The eccentric de Luce household is disrupted from their regular pursuits by two arrivals- one bizarre and the other sinister. Murder is the result. The youngest member of the household, Flavia, turns from her favorite chemistry work to solve a crime that points toward her father as the culprit.
This first of a popular well-loved series was a strong first book outing. The de Luces are not like others. They all are brilliant and/or odd in their own ways from widowed father, three daughters who pursue diverse interests in music, books, and chemistry, a garrulous warmhearted cook-housekeeper and war-torn handyman. The sisters are abominable to each other, the father distant, and none are seemingly warmly attached as they racket about their family’s old country estate near the village of Bishop’s Lacey in rural 195o’s England.
I had a good time with Flavia and the rest of the de Luces along with the colorful characters of the village and the local police. Flavia is scary-brilliant for an eleven-year-old and, in fact, gets her back up if she gets treated like a child. She also tends to go at things on her own with an independence she learned from being dismissed or ignored to find her own way. Only Dogger, her father’s valet as well as the handyman, really pays her much attention.
The mystery was not that difficult to figure out though there were a few little surprises I didn’t see coming, but it was fun and exciting watching Flavia nose out the clues, both to the past and the present. There are little side jaunts to introduce matters because this is the first in a series and there are pauses to explain some technical bits related to Flavia’s detecting. There were a couple lagging moments, but only enough to notice that the plot was paused for an explanation like for the history of the stamps at the center of the mystery or how her father’s past fit into this story.
Alan Bradley does a brilliant job conveying a young girl’s mind while at the same time showing she could think circles around many of the adults in her life. The historical setting, the quirky, colorful characters, and the mystery combine for a rather engaging tale. I will definitely be pushing forward with the series.
The narrator, Jayne Entwistle, is brilliant as Flavia and the rest of the cast of characters between age, gender, and class with her voices. She also somehow conveys the historical period and tone of the story. I saw everything so clearly in my mind with her telling the story.
All in all, a brilliant start and one I can recommend. The detective might still be in braces, but adults are definitely part of the target audience. A quirky cozy for historical mystery fans.
My Ratings
Story: B+
Narration: A
Sophia Rose
About the Book:
In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950—and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia’s family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”
To Flavia the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions, and connections. Soon her father, a man raising his three daughters alone, is seized, accused of murder. And in a police cell, during a violent thunderstorm, Colonel de Luce tells his daughter an astounding story—of a schoolboy friendship turned ugly, of a priceless object that vanished in a bizarre and brazen act of thievery, of a Latin teacher who flung himself to his death from the school’s tower thirty years before. Now Flavia is armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together, to examine new suspects, and begin a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself. Of this much the girl is sure: her father is innocent of murder—but protecting her and her sisters from something even worse….
Author: Alan Bradley
Narrator: Jayne Entwistle
Series: Flavia de Luce Mysteries #1
Genre: Historical Cozy Mystery
Audiobook Release Date: April 28, 2009
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio
Length: 9 hours and 53 minutes
Source: Book Source
Audio Speed: 1.2x
