Alan Bradley

If you told me a year ago that I'd enjoy reading a story set in 1950 about a chemistry-obsessed 11 year old girl growing up in an English mansion with her sisters and absent-minded father, I would not have believed you.

Alan Bradley was a 70 year old first time novelist when the first 'Flavia de Luce' mystery was released in 2009, and he did an amazing job. I hope he has the longevity to release a long series of Flavia books - they're really good fun.

First was 'The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie' (with the dubious distinction of also being a stamp-collecting mystery - which doesn't sound interesting, but it is!) where Flavia shows great restraint in not poisoning her irksome sisters while saving her entire family.

I enjoyed the first book most, possibly because Flavia was in actual peril for a good part of the story, and I didn't get to spend as much time with some of my favorite secondary characters in book two (such as Inspector Hewitt). But it's not the author's job to provide me superfluous face time with characters x, y and z but to tell the story that needs telling.

The second book was 'The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag' which is an admittedly awkward title, but a book that somehow manages to combine puppetry, WWII refugees, murder, a pigeon-poop poison remedy and nefarious chocolate in a realistic story.