Speaking From Among the Bones

Speaking From Among the Bones by Alan Bradley.

Hardcover: 375 pages
Publisher: Delacorte Press (January 29, 2013)
ISBN-10: 0385344031

From award-winning author Alan Bradley comes the next cozy British mystery starring intrepid young sleuth Flavia de Luce, hailed by USA Today as “one of the most remarkable creations in recent literature.”
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Eleven-year-old amateur detective and ardent chemist Flavia de Luce is used to digging up clues, whether they’re found among the potions in her laboratory or between the pages of her insufferable sisters’ diaries. What she is not accustomed to is digging up bodies. Upon the five-hundredth anniversary of St. Tancred’s death, the English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey is busily preparing to open its patron saint’s tomb. Nobody is more excited to peek inside the crypt than Flavia, yet what she finds will halt the proceedings dead in their tracks: the body of Mr. Collicutt, the church organist, his face grotesquely and inexplicably masked. Who held a vendetta against Mr. Collicutt, and why would they hide him in such a sacred resting place? The irrepressible Flavia decides to find out. And what she unearths will prove there’s never such thing as an open-and-shut case.

I have never really been good at writing reviews but my timing was good for this book because Carl just wrote a review and if anyone can give it justice it’s Carl!  So you might want to click the link and see what he has to say.

I began this series after reading a number of reviews from others on book one, Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  At first I found that an 11 year old, chemistry genius, murder sleuth was a bit more then I could chew.  I mean.. really!

But Alan Bradley persisted. He wrote not just of the “murder” but of the family. Flavia and her sisters.  Her dad and her mother whom she had never met. And then there was Gladys.  Gladys is her bicycle.  My old ratty bicycle when I was her age was “Nelly-Bell”.  I had an instant connection to Flavia!  I was never nor will be smart like her… but we had our bikes!

During the coarse of 5 books Alan Bradley has mad some fabulous characters.  He is genius in making a little girl a chemistry prodigy (and I admit to being lost when he gets into the chemistry parts!) And somehow.. he makes this 11 year old genius loveable.. and it makes sense that she solves the crimes!   Gah! who’da thunk?!!  But he does it, and does it so well you find yourself anxiously awaiting his next book!

I think, if I ever met Mr Bradley I would ask the obvious question:  Is there some little girl that he fashioned Flavia after?!   If so… she must be one remarkable little girl!