The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
A Flavia de Luce Mystery
- Publisher
- Doubleday Canada
- Initial publish date
- Nov 2009
- Category
- Amateur Sleuth, Historical, Cozy
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780385665834
- Publish Date
- Nov 2009
- List Price
- $23.00
Add it to your shelf
Where to buy it
Recommended Age, Grade, and Reading Levels
- Grade: 8 to 9
Description
Winner of the 2007 Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger
A delightfully dark English mystery, featuring precocious young sleuth Flavia de Luce and her eccentric family.
The summer of 1950 hasn’t offered up anything out of the ordinary for eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce: bicycle explorations around the village, keeping tabs on her neighbours, relentless battles with her older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, and brewing up poisonous concoctions while plotting revenge in their home’s abandoned Victorian chemistry lab, which Flavia has claimed for her own.
But then a series of mysterious events gets Flavia’s attention: A dead bird is found on the doormat, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. A mysterious late-night visitor argues with her aloof father, Colonel de Luce, behind closed doors. And in the early morning Flavia finds a red-headed stranger lying in the cucumber patch and watches him take his dying breath. For Flavia, the summer 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.”
Did the stranger die of poisoning? There was a piece missing from Mrs. Mullet’s custard pie, and none of the de Luces would have dared to eat the awful thing. Or could he have been killed by the family’s loyal handyman, Dogger… or by the Colonel himself! At that moment, Flavia commits herself to solving the crime — even if it means keeping information from the village police, in order to protect her family. But then her father confesses to the crime, for the same reason, and it’s up to Flavia to free him of suspicion. Only she has the ingenuity to follow the clues that reveal the victim’s identity, and a conspiracy that reaches back into the de Luces’ murky past.
A thoroughly entertaining romp of a novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is inventive and quick-witted, with tongue-in-cheek humour that transcends the macabre seriousness of its subject.
About the author
Awards
- Winner, Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel
Contributor Notes
Alan Bradley is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven Flavia de Luce mystery novels and the memoir The Shoebox bible. His first Flavia novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, received the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award, the Dilys Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Agatha Award, the Macavity Award, and the Barry Award, and was nominated for the Anthony Award. His other Flavia de Luce novels are The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, A Red Herring Without Mustard, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Speaking from Among the Bones, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d, The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place, and The Golden Tresses of the Dead, as well as the ebook short story “The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse.” Originally from Toronto, he now lives and writes on an island in the middle of the Irish Sea.
Excerpt: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery (by (author) Alan Bradley)
ONE
It was as black in the closet as old blood. They had shoved me in and locked the door. I breathed heavily through my nose, fighting desperately to remain calm. I tried counting to ten on every intake of breath, and to eight as I released each one slowly into the darkness. Luckily for me, they had pulled the gag so tightly into my open mouth that my nostrils were left unobstructed, and I was able to draw in one slow lungful after another of the stale, musty air.
I tried hooking my fingernails under the silk scarf that bound my hands behind me but, since I always bit them to the quick, there was nothing to catch. Jolly good luck then that I’d remembered to put my fingertips together, using them as ten firm little bases to press my palms apart as they had pulled the knots tight.
Now I rotated my wrists, squeezing them together until I felt a bit of slack, using my thumbs to work the silk down until the knots were between my palms — then between my fingers. If they had been bright enough to think of tying my thumbs together, I should never have escaped. What utter morons they were.
With my hands free at last, I made short work of the gag.
Now for the door. But first, to be sure they were not lying in wait for me, I squatted and peered out through the keyhole at the attic. Thank heavens they had taken the key away with them. There was no one in sight: save for its perpetual tangle of shadows, junk and sad bric-a-brac, the long attic was empty. The coast was clear.
Reaching above my head at the back of the closet, I unscrewed one of the wire coat-hooks from its mounting board. By sticking its curved wing into the keyhole and levering the other end, I was able to form an L-shaped hook, which I poked into the depths of the ancient lock. A bit of judicious fishing and fiddling yielded a gratifying click. It was almost too easy. The door swung open and I was free.
I skipped down the broad stone staircase into the hall, pausing at the door of the dining room just long enough to toss my pigtails back over my shoulders and into their regulation position.
Father still insisted on dinner being served as the clock struck the hour and eaten at the massive oak refectory table, just as it had been when mother was alive.
‘Ophelia and Daphne not down yet, Flavia?’ he asked peevishly, looking up from the latest issue of The British Philatelist, which lay open beside his meat and potatoes.
‘I haven’t seen them in ages,’ I said.
It was true. I hadn’t seen them — not since they had gagged and blindfolded me, then lugged me hogtied up the attic stairs and locked me in the closet.
Father glared at me over his spectacles for the statutory four seconds before he went back to mumbling over his sticky treasures.
I shot him a broad smile: a smile wide enough to present him with a good view of the wire braces that caged my teeth. Although they gave me the look of a dirigible with the skin off, Father always liked being reminded that he was getting his money’s worth. But this time he was too preoccupied to notice.
I hoisted the lid off the Spode vegetable dish and, from the depths of its hand-painted butterflies and raspberries, spooned out a generous helping of peas. Using my knife as a ruler and my fork as a prod, I marshalled the peas so that they formed meticulous rows and columns across my plate: rank upon rank of little green spheres, spaced with a precision that would have delighted the heart of the most exacting Swiss watchmaker. Then, beginning at the bottom left, I speared the first pea with my fork and ate it.
It was all Ophelia’s fault. She was, after all, seventeen, and therefore expected to possess at least a modicum of the maturity she should come into as an adult. That she should gang up with Daphne, who was thirteen, simply wasn’t fair. Their combined ages totalled thirty years. Thirty years! — against my eleven. It was not only unsporting, it was downright rotten. And it simply screamed out for revenge.
Next morning I was busy among the flasks and flagons of my chemical laboratory on the top floor of the east wing when Ophelia barged in without so much as a la-di-dah.
‘Where’s my pearl necklace?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m not the keeper of your trinkets.’
‘I know you took it. The Mint Imperials that were in my lingerie drawer are gone too, and I’ve observed that missing mints in this household seem always to wind up in the same grubby little mouth.’
I adjusted the flame on a spirit lamp that was heating a beaker of red liquid. ‘If you’re insinuating that my personal hygiene is not up to the same high standard as yours you can go suck my galoshes.’
‘Flavia!’
‘Well, you can. I’m sick and tired of being blamed for everything, Feely.’
But my righteous indignation was cut short as Ophelia peered short-sightedly into the ruby flask, which was just coming to the boil.
‘What’s that sticky mass in the bottom?’ Her long, manicured fingernail tapped at the glass.
‘It’s an experiment. Careful, Feely, it’s acid!’
Ophelia’s face went white. ‘Those are my pearls! They belonged to Mummy!’
Ophelia was the only one of Harriet’s daughters who referred to her as ‘Mummy’; the only one of us old enough to have any real memories of the flesh-and-blood woman who had carried us in her body, a fact that Ophelia never tired of reminding us. Harriet had been killed in a mountaineering accident when I was just a year old, and she was not often spoken of at Buckshaw.
Was I jealous of Ophelia’s memories? Did I resent them? I don’t believe I did; it ran far deeper than that. In rather an odd way, I despised Ophelia’s memories of our mother.
I looked up slowly from my work so that the round lenses of my spectacles would flash blank white semaphores of light at her. I knew that whenever I did this, Ophelia had the horrid impression that she was in the presence of some mad black-and-white German scientist in a film at the Gaumont.
‘Beast!’
‘Hag!’ I retorted. But not until Ophelia had spun round on her heel — quite neatly, I thought — and stormed out the door.
Retribution was not long in coming, but then with Ophelia, it never was. Ophelia was not, as I was, a long-range planner who believed in letting the soup of revenge simmer to perfection.
Editorial Reviews
"Sure in its story, pace and voice, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie deliciously mixes all the ingredients of great storytelling.The kind of novel you can pass on to any reader knowing their pleasure is assured."
— Andrew Pyper, author of The Killing Circle
"A wickedly clever story, a dead true and original voice, and an English country house in the summer: Alexander McCall Smith meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Please, please, Mr. Bradley, tell me we'll be seeing Flavia again soon?"
—Laurie R. King, New York Times bestselling author of The Game
“One of the hottest reads of 2009.”
— The Times (U.K.)
“Alan Bradley brews a bubbly beaker of fun in his devilishly clever, wickedly amusing debut mystery, launching an eleven-year-old heroine with a passion for chemistry—and revenge! What a delightful, original book!”
—Carolyn Hart, Anthony and Agatha award-winning author of Death Walked In
“Alan Bradley’ s marvelous book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, is a fantastic read, a winner. Flavia walks right off the page and follows me through my day. I can hardly wait for the next book. Bravo.”
—Louise Penny, acclaimed author of Still Life
Praise from the CWA Dagger Award judges:
“The most original of the bunch, I think, with a deliciously deceptive opening which really sets the tone of macabre fun. Flavia is a wonderful creation, along with the rest of her eccentric family, and makes for a highly engaging sleuth. Think the Mitfords, as imagined by Dorothy L Sayers. The plot, with its intriguing philatelic elements, is nicely ingenious and delivers a very good end, with a fun twist. Would make very good Sunday night telly, I think.”
“I adored this! Our heroine is refreshingly youthful, funny and sharp and the author creates such a strong sense of time and place. Flavia’s eccentric family are delightful and I love seeing them interact within their crazy home. There are also interesting depths to the plot — the stamp collecting, the chemistry experiments, and the acknowledgement of past events and how they have affected these characters. The author’s tone is very tongue-in-cheek and offers something quite different in this genre, and the story is cleverly structured and beautifully written. This doesn’t read like a first novel. Assuming the mystery itself will be as enticing and smoothly handled as the opening, I can see Flavia solving crimes into adulthood. Great title too!”
“Really adored the voice of the characters in this—especially Flavia, the spirited main protagonist—and the sense of place is beautifully described, particularly when telling the history of the house and its inhabitants. The family unit, comprising of the taciturn, introspective Colonel and his three daughters is well written, humorous and the sibling relationships very realistic. The author should be praised for creating a work that has nostalgic interest as well as a murder mystery, in places this almost reads like an Enid Blyton novel for adults!”
Librarian Reviews
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
A series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw. A dead bird is found on the doorstep with a postage stamp pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man in the cucumber patch and watches him as he draws his last breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and thrilled, life starts in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw.Source: The Canadian Children’s Book Centre. Best Books for Kids & Teens. 2010.
User Reviews
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Flavia de Luce is not your typical eleven-year old girl. She lives in a country house outside the village of Bishop’s Lacey with her distant father and distracted sisters; her mother died ten years ago. Her father spends most of the day worrying about money and thinking about stamps. Her seventeen-year old sister, Ophelia, passes the time by playing the piano, primping in front of the mirror, and thinking about the boys in the village. Her thirteen-year old sister, Daphne, reads classic English literature all day. And Flavia herself is passionately devoted to Chemistry, with a particular interest in poisons, and spends countless hours concocting mystery potions in the laboratory of her country house. Sometimes, when bored or especially irritated by her sisters, she finds practical applications for her knowledge, such as the time she extracted chemicals from poison ivy and injected them into Ophelia’s lipstick. By now, she has become an expert escape artist from all the times her sisters have retaliated by tying her up, throwing her in the wardrobe and locking the door.One day, the cook opens the kitchen door to find a dead jack snipe with a postage stamp impaled upon its beak. Flavia’s father turns pale and retreats into his study. Flavia later overhears a redheaded stranger allude to a decades-old murder in an attempt to blackmail her father. That night, she wanders out to the garden, finds the mysterious visitor collapsed in the cucumber patch, and watches him die. Flavia alerts the police, and when they arrive, a policeman instructs her to leave the crime scene and go make tea. Annoyed by the policeman’s condescending attitude, Flavia decides that the best way to seek revenge is to solve the mystery first, all by herself.
Hopping on her trusty bicycle Gladys, Flavia pedals over to Bishop's Lacey to make her own investigations. She pores over old newspapers, talks to the villagers, reads the hotel's records, and ransacks the stranger's hotel room in search of evidence. And along the way, she puts her knowledge of poisons to good use.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie follows the structure of a classic English mystery, but its utterly enchanting narrator fills the story with her own darkly comic voice, creating a reading experience best described as Agatha Christie-meets-Edward Gorey. Readers who enjoy this book will be pleased to learn that it is the first in a six-part series.
Also posted on my blog at www.theteatimereader.wordpress.com
Other titles by
What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust
A Flavia de Luce Mystery
The Golden Tresses of the Dead
A Flavia de Luce Mystery
The Grave's a Fine and Private Place
A Flavia de Luce Mystery
Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd
A Flavia de Luce Mystery
As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust
A Flavia de Luce Mystery
The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches
A Flavia de Luce Mystery
Speaking From Among the Bones
A Flavia de Luce Mystery
The Buckshaw Chronicles, Volume 1
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows
A Flavia de Luce Mystery
A Red Herring Without Mustard
A Flavia de Luce Mystery
