Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce solves another one

 A Red Herring Without Mustard, published in 2011, is Alan Bradley's third Flavia de Luce mystery. He published the first, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, in 2008 when he was 68 years old. A former radio and television engineer and screenwriter, he'd published a memoir and non-fiction book when his wife suggested he write something new about the "girl on the camp stool," a minor character who had emerged in the novel he was working on. 

He entered the UK's Debut Dagger contest by submitting fifteen pages about the girl, now named Flavia de Luce, and an outline for the mystery. Bradley, a Canadian, set the book in England despite having never been there. The book won and eleven-year-old Flavia was so popular there are now a dozen mysteries in the series, the most recent published in 2024 although Flavia has not aged.

The books are set in the fictional English village of Bishop's Lacey in 1950. Flavia lives with two older sisters and her father, the family man-of-all-work Dogger, and the part-time housekeeper and cook Mrs. Mullet in a decaying manor home called Buckshaw. Flavia's dad, Colonel de Luce, passes most of his time alone, collecting stamps and listening to music. Ophelia, the eldest sister, prides herself on her appearance and spends most of her time, according to Flavia, looking in the mirror. Daphne, the middle sister, has her nose stuck in a book. Flavia's mother died during a mountain-climbing trip in Tibet when Flavia was small, and her dad has managed to hold the family together although money is tight and the large, decaying country house needs major repairs. 

Flavia narrates the two books in the series I've read. Can you say "precocious"? Although she does not seem to have gone to school, she has absorbed books in the house's extensive library and taken as her own the laboratory in the house that some dead ancestor set up. She knows a great deal of chemistry with a special interest in poisons and will use the knowledge to torment her sisters and solve murders.

Can you say "nosy"? Flavia is willing to poke about Buckshaw, its extensive grounds, the village of Bishop's Lacy, and the surrounding area in an effort to understand—unravel—a series of incidents. In A Red Herring Without Mustard these include a bashed gypsy woman, a dead baby, a dead forger hung on a statue, and much more. Indeed, some readers complain that there is too much.

Can you say "fearless"? Perhaps because she is only eleven Flavia cannot visualize being harmed except possibly by her sisters who early in Red Herring put a sack over her head, throw her into the basement, and interrogate her. Ophelia and Daphne know how to scare her, but Flavia knows how to revenge herself. Nevertheless, she has a moral sense. She knows right from wrong and does her best to do right.

If any of this sounds like it appeals—and it must appeal to a great many people or there wouldn't be a book series, plus a TV series and a movie in production—and if you haven't read Flavia's stories, you might give it a try. Bradley says he feels no difference in approach to writing children’s stories and lifestyle and arts columns to writing adult stories. “In all of these genres—I hate that word!—there’s a need to avoid nastiness and to write from a pure heart. There are enough problems in the world without inventing more. The Golden Age detective story is arm’s-length enough from reality to fulfill the reader’s need for gruesomeness, without any real offense.” 

Making a better world in rural New Zealand

Eleanor Catton tells her story Birnam Wood by means of four points of view: Mira, Shelley, Tony, and Robert Lemoine. There are couple others but they are minor. One of the novel's pleasures is the way Catton shifts point of view without chapter breaks and without losing the reader.

The novel is set in New Zealand's fictional Korowai National Park and a farm that abuts it. "Birnam Wood" is the name of an ecological (essentially communist), activist collective that plants vegetables wherever the members can get away with doing so—friends' yards, vacant lots, and public lands where they won't be noticed. They sell, eat, and donate the produce.

Although Birnam Wood is ostensibly leaderless, 29-year-old Mira, a trained horticulturalist, is the leader and one of the founders. Shelley is a little younger than Mira and another founder; if Mira is the group's spark plug Shelley is the oil that keeps it running smoothly. Tony, and another founder, has been in Mexico teaching English for the five years before the book opens. He's back, at loose ends, and uneasy about reconnecting with Birnam Wood because his departure for Mexico was awkward. 

Robert Lemoine, in his mid-40s, is an American billionaire, a founder of Automoto, a Silicon Valley technology company that, among other things manufactures drones. Lemoine plans to buy the farm and build a bunker that will withstand the nuclear winter that comes with nuclear war. Beware of Americans bearing checkbooks.

The book is a pleasure because each character clearly wants something and tries to get  it. Mira wants to put Birnam Wood on a solid financial base; if it improves the world so much the better. Shelley wants to stop playing second fiddle to Mira and do something else. Idealistic Tony wants to write an article that will expose the corruption and perfidy of New Zealand's government. Lemoine wants to increase his billions. What the characters do—or don't do—to obtain what they want leads plausibly and naturally to conflict.

Birnam Wood is worth reading slowly to savor Catton's writing, long blocks of prose broken by spurts of dialogue. She includes descriptions of events in the characters' biographies, but I never bumped on these as data dumps or "exposition"; somehow the memories, histories, past events felt natural as I reached them. The book is interesting also for Catton's ability to evoke the New Zealand landscape and the three young characters' feelings about the country. Birnam Wood from the title to the last sentence is a remarkable piece of fiction.