Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place – A Fine Mystery in a fine series

The Grave's a Fine and Private Place by Alan Bradley

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Whenever someone posts a generic “what should I read” status on social media, and if mystery is a genre they enjoy, I often to go this Alan Bradley series. Flavia de Luce, the youthful Angela Fletcher of 1950s England, is fun to follow on her exploits. It is just refreshing to have a fun female character to follow! Bradley has done a good job of keeping it fresh – though the murder mystery portion is formulaic, we have watched Flavia grow as she has faced […]

I would hire Arthur Dogger & Associates.

The Golden Tresses of the Dead (Flavia de Luce, #10) by Alan Bradley

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Flavia (and Dogger) continue to delight me. The mysteries continue to frustrate me. Will I continue to read this series (even though this was originally supposed to be the last book)? Most likely. The book opens at Flavia’s sister’s wedding to the German POW Dieter. Feely finds a severed finger in her wedding cake. She loses it and almost ruins her own wedding; Flavia is fascinated, and quickly tucks the finger away. Whose finger is it? Who put it there? Why? Flavia and Dogger are on […]

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d – Precocious Mystery Fun Times

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd by Alan Bradley

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This Alan Bradley series is one of my favorites to recommend to others. Light and fluffy I describe the protagonist as a young and plucky Jessica Fletcher, a la TV’s “Murder She Wrote.” At this point Flavia is a pre-teen and still using her smarts to solve murders in her village, and I find these books, and her, delightful. This is the 8th installment and it’s been over a year since I read the 7th. As murder mysteries go, they have become a little predictable, […]

The Blood of an Englishman

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I love Flavia de Luce, the 11-year-old budding chemist living in the small village of Bishop’s Lacey in post-WWII England. Flavia uses her natural curiosity and scientific knowledge to solve murders. In The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, Flavia works to solve both the murder of a puppeteer. She soon finds it’s related somehow to the mysterious death of a young boy in her village that happened 5 years ago. This is the second book in the series, and it seems to take place […]

I still love Flavia, but I don’t know if that’s enough anymore.

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Sigh. When is the right time to give up a long-running series? Last I heard there were only going to be nine books in the series, but this is book nine, and no end in sight*? I’m just not enjoying them like I used to. Which is weird, because I still love Flavia, her family and friends and assorted hangers-on. But the mysteries and plots just don’t do it for me anymore. I find myself having a really hard time keeping my attention on them. […]

Precocity, Poison, and Pie

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I think every review of the Flavia de Luce books contains the word “precocious” in it somewhere. Flavia is no ordinary 11-year-old. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is the first book in this mystery series, and introduces chemistry whiz, poison-obsessed Flavia, her widowed father, her two sisters, their retainer Dogger, and their housekeeper Mrs. Mullett. The de Luces own a slightly dilapidated country home in 1950s England. At the start of the novel, Flavia overhears her father arguing with a strange man, […]



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