Recent Reads: from the front lines!

A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley

This is less of a review and more of a “dispatch from the front lines” as I’m only about one third of the way through this wonderful book.

I think this is the 3rd Flavia de Luce novel in the fiction section of the wonderful Rockport Public Library. I have resisted dipping into these delightful books largely because of a prejudice of mine: generally I have stayed away from novels set in Great Britain that are by authors who are non-British.  Thankfully Mr Bradley has provided that “on the road to Damsacus” moment that has shown me what a load of old piffle my snooty attitude has been.

Alan Bradley is from Toronto, Ontario and now, after a long career in broadcasting and teaching, is “retired” and seemingly writing more that full time from his home in British Columbia, Canada.  He seems to have read and stored away in his mind every mystery/crime fiction novel between Arthur Conan Doyle and Barbara Pym and also to have read and retained every “classic” piece of children’s adventure literature from Robert Louis Stevenson to Enid Blyton and beyond. Not only has he done this but he has the most wonderful ability to channel the spirit of the fiction in Girls Own Paper via the likes of Angela Brazil.

Of course, it’s one thing to read but entirely another thing to write.  Alan Bradley has tremendous fun creatively snatching snippets of style from many of the above sources, or at least I suppose he has!

The result is a rip roaring tale narrated by the eleven year old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters of a widowed ex army officer and now full time philatelist who has inherited the family estate consisting of a decaying stately home with a very few elderly retainers.  Mr Bradley gives clues that the time period is between 1948 and 1951.

Flavia shows robust signs of being just as eccentric as her father and late mother, Harriet who died ten years previously in a climbing accident in Tibet.  She has taken ownership of her great uncle Tarquin’s laboratory, situated in a remote wing of the house, and is well on the way to becoming an avid amateur chemist.  She is precocious but extremely endearing to the reader.  She has a strong propensity for getting mixed up in all sorts of adventures, many of which involve assistance from the local constabulary in this fictional bucolic, decaying segment of a county in deepest rural England.

Enough said - I must get back to Flavia’s fabulous yarn!