The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag - (Flavia de Luce) by Alan Bradley (Paperback)

About the Book

The intrepid Flavia de Luce applies her skills in the chemistry lab to solving the murder of a master puppeteer, a case that's further complicated--as always--by her tormenting sisters.

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - "Flavia is incisive, cutting and hilarious . . . one of the most remarkable creations in recent literature." --USA Today

Flavia de Luce, a dangerously smart eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders, thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop's Lacey are over--until beloved puppeteer Rupert Porson has his own strings sizzled in an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. But who'd do such a thing, and why? Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she's letting on? What about Porson's charming but erratic assistant? All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can't solve--without Flavia's help. But in getting so close to who's secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head?

BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Alan Bradley's A Red Herring Without Mustard, discussion questions, and an essay by the author.

Review Quotes

"Flavia is incisive, cutting and hilarious . . . one of the most remarkable creations in recent literature."--USA Today

"Utterly beguiling . . . wicked wit . . . The real delight here is [Flavia's] droll voice and the eccentric cast."--People (four stars)

"Bradley takes everything you expect and subverts it, delivering a smart, irreverent, unsappy mystery." --Entertainment Weekly

"A pitch-perfect performance that surpasses an already worthy debut."--Houston Chronicle

"Discovering Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce books is several steps beyond pleasure--it's a sheer delight."--Winston-Salem Journal

"Wickedly funny."--The Times-Picayune

About the Author

Alan Bradley is the New York Times bestselling author of many short stories, children's stories, newspaper columns, and the memoir The Shoebox Bible. His first Flavia de Luce novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, received the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award, the Dilys Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Agatha Award, the Macavity Award, and the Barry Award, and was nominated for the Anthony Award. His other Flavia de Luce novels are The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, A Red Herring Without Mustard, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Speaking from Among the Bones, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd, and The Grave's a Fine and Private Place, as well as the ebook short story "The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse."