3 Stars
This is the
eighth Flavia de Luce mystery.
Flavia
returns home after four months in Canada and learns that her father is
seriously ill. Unable to visit because
she has been told he needs rest to recover, Flavia finds distraction in a
murder. Running an errand for a friend,
she discovers the body of a local woodcarver, a discovery which, as expected,
has her take Gladys for several rides as she tries to piece together what
happened.
Readers
familiar with the Flavia de Luce series will find few surprises. The plot stays true to the formula developed
in the previous books. All of the
secondary characters are present though there is less interaction with her
sisters, interactions which I always enjoyed.
Flavia’s observations provide the usual humour.
Flavia
keeps repeating that she is a changed person since her sojourn in Canada. She finds herself behaving
uncharacteristically. Early on, Flavia
admits, “For quite some time now, I had not been myself. Much as I hated to admit it, the events of
the past several months had shaken me rather badly. I was not at all the Flavia de Luce I had
once been. Whether that was a bad thing
or a good one remained to be seen, but until I managed to work it out, the
feeling was one of bearing an enormous invisible burden: the weight of the world.” At one point, she even says, “Who, really, am
I? Is Flavia de Luce the person everyone
thinks she is? Is she who I think she is?” But it is not only Flavia who is changing;
Dogger says, “’I fear our world is changing, Miss Flavia . . . and not
necessarily for the better.’” I found
all of this signaling a little heavy-handed so the ending came as no
surprise.
One element
that bothered me is Flavia’s not visiting her father in the hospital. Though she is told that her father needs his
rest and so visits are not allowed, since when is Flavia stopped when she
really wants to do something? And though
her investigation occupies her mind, it seems strange that she gives her father
so little thought even though she says she understands “how grave Father’s
situation must be.”
Perhaps I
am getting tired of Flavia because I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I did
the earlier ones. The book is so much
like the others that I found it almost tedious.
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