Murder, English Style
Categories: Mystery & Suspense , Fiction
Here are a couple of peculiarly enjoyable little mysteries set in England. The instantly inimitable voice of the eleven-year-old narrator of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley, will leave you in no doubt that it’s in a class of its own. And the George Booth cartoon on the cover of The Herring-Seller’s Apprentice, by L. C. Tyler, will clue you in that it isn’t the usual sort of cozy either.
Flavia de Luce is overjoyed to stumble on a dying man in the garden of their English country house in the middle of the night. Along with her passion for chemistry and poisons, she has always wanted to solve a murder.
The man is an apparent stranger, but the enterprising Flavia suspects he is connected to the dead jacksnipe her father found on the doorstep a few days before with a penny stamp impaled on its beak.
And he is—the crime is linked to a long-ago and a recent theft of two extremely valuable stamps, and the murder is soon blamed on Flavia’s stamp-collecting father, who as a schoolboy witnessed the first of the crimes.
But the murderer reckons without the indomitable Flavia, whose intelligence, local knowledge, and inexhaustible curiosity put her firmly on his trail.
The pie of the title isn’t an apple pie, but the book is as crisp and solid and bursting with flavor as a tart green apple. Flavia is a true original.
Ethelred Tressider is a (not terribly good) mystery writer whose ex-wife has vanished. Really, what help could he offer the police on the subject? He was in France when she disappeared.
Elsie Thirkettle, his bustling literary agent (and the herring-seller of the second title here), thinks he knows more than he is saying, and she snoops with great interest. But then the police find the body and determine the death was the work of a serial killer. Are they right, or is there something else going on?
The viewpoint shifts between Ethelred and Elsie as each works to find out just what did happen to Ethelred’s ex. It’s an enjoyable light diversion for mystery fans.
