The Flavia De Luce Series 1-4 (76 page)

And to John Demers of Delicious Mischief, who managed to turn a steeplechase interview into a sheer delight.

Also in Houston, Random House representatives Liz Sullivan and Gianna LaMorte made me feel at home.

To that legend among booksellers, Barbara Peters of The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Arizona, my profound thanks for being the perfect hostess. Although she’s younger than I am, Barbara is nevertheless my long-lost twin.

Patrick Milliken, John Goodwin, and Will Hanisko, also of The Poisoned Pen, kindly allowed me a peek behind the scenes of a busy bookstore and plied me with refreshments.

Thanks, too, to Lesa Holstine and Cathy Johnson, for a very special evening during which we talked happily about everything under the sun.

Kim Garza at the Tempe Public Library put together a delightful afternoon of animated discussion. I still carry in my mind the image of all those happy faces. Thank you, Tempe!

In Westminster, Maryland, Lori Zook, Cheryl Kelly, Judy Pohlhaus, Camille Marchi, Ginny Mortorff, Wanda Rawlings, Pam Kaufman, Stacey Carlini, Sherry Drechsler plied me with soft drinks, cakes, and JuJubes (which, when we got around to recalling candy treats of long-gone movie matinees, they also taught me to pronounce correctly: It’s “JOO-joo-bays,” not “JOO-joobs”).

Meanwhile, at Doubleday Canada, my publicist Sharon Klein has been a perfect dynamo. I must also admit that I’m in awe of Doubleday Canada’s team, including Martha Leonard, as well as Heather Sanderson and Sharmila Mohammed of the Digital Team, who have brought the Flavia Fan Club to life and provided a cosy haven for visitors.

And I’d be remiss indeed if I failed to extend special thanks to Brad Martin, President and CEO of Random House of Canada, who has championed Flavia from her very beginnings.

In spite of the worst blizzard of the year, Bryce Zorn and Curtis Weston of Chapters in Kelowna, British Columbia, managed a full house for the Canadian launch of the first book in this series,
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
. Thanks also to Paul Hasselback, who saw me safely home through black ice and all the windblown drifts.

Trish Kells of Random House Canada, who arranged a memorable book event in Vancouver, also acted as chauffeur and laughed at my jokes in spite of the rain.

Deb McVitie of 32 Books in North Vancouver was the charming sponsor of my first away-from-home reading and book signing. My co-readers, Hannah Holborn and Andrea Gunraj, helped to make it an unforgettable evening. If Hannah and Andrea are indicative of our up-and-coming young writers, we have no need whatsoever to worry about the future.

And finally, to my wife, Shirley, whose love, company, and patient support have allowed me the luxury of writing. Amadeus and Cleo have helped a lot, too.

A Postcard from Everywhere

The International Response to the Flavia de Luce Novels

Alan Bradley

The Flavia de Luce books have so far been published in thirty-four countries and thirty-one languages. I sometimes ask myself—and am asked by others—if I could have foreseen the phenomenally warm reception with which they have been received around the world.

Probably not.

It’s been like witnessing a miracle to watch as, over the months, the postman delivered to my door editions in Hebrew, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Croatian, Korean, Estonian, and Catalan, each with its own unique interpretation of Flavia and of Buckshaw, her ancestral home. The Dutch edition, for instance, has on its cover a picture of Flavia on her bicycle, Gladys, her hair flowing out behind her and metamorphosing into the branches of a tree, while the Russian edition has Flavia in a traditional Russian folk costume and boots!

Hardly a day goes by that I don’t hear from readers in some new (to me) part of the world. Word comes from Australia of a ninety-five-year-old great-grandmother sharing
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
with her eleven-year-old great-granddaughter, and from a pensioner in the UK who tells me that Flavia transports him back to his youth. I’ve had news of parents reading the book aloud to their children, of children reading aloud to their parents, and of children and parents—and grandparents—reading aloud to one another. All of which makes me as proud as Punch.

I wanted to capture, or at least recapture, in these books that joyous, burning enthusiasm and intensity of obsession with which eleven-year-olds are so easily ignited.

I was about Flavia’s age in 1950, the year in which the series begins, growing up in a family of storytellers. My grandfather had run away to sea as a little boy, and when he finally came home, because he had grown up, no one in his family recognized him. He went on to serve in the British Army in Afghanistan and South Africa, and again in World War I. In Afghanistan he learned to knit socks and in South Africa he learned needlepoint. I asked him once if he’d ever killed anyone, and he said, “I hope not.”

Stricken with rheumatoid arthritis, he spent the last seventeen years of his life confined to a bed in what would then have been called the parlor, and we used to gather at his bedside and listen to tales of his old pals and his travels.

It was probably there that the Flavia de Luce novels had their real beginning: in my grandfather’s stories of an England and a British Empire that no longer existed. For more than sixty years I often dreamed about flying to England, only to awaken before the plane landed. When
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
won the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award and I flew to London to receive it, I realized that it was almost precisely one hundred years to the day since my grandparents had left their beloved country to emigrate to Canada.

Since then I’ve become something of a traveler.

As I set out on a recent reading and book signing tour of Germany,
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
had just been published in paperback under the title
Mord im Gurkenbeet
(
Death in the Cucumber Patch
), and had already made its appearance on
Der Spiegel
’s bestseller list. The book’s sequel,
The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag,
was newly out in hardcover as
Mord ist Kein Kinderspiel
(
Death Is Not Child’s Play
).

I must admit I’d been just a little apprehensive about how Dieter, the German ex–prisoner of war, would be received in Germany, but everywhere I went—everywhere! from Berlin to Hanover, and from Frankfurt to Cologne—people would come up after the reading, begging to be assured that Dieter would return in future books.

Every night, as actress Anna Thalbach read aloud from the second book, I could feel the radiant warmth of the response—especially when she read the chapter in which Dieter first appears. (Anna’s mother, Katharina Thalbach, by the way, was one of the stars of
The Tin Drum
.) Anna is a regular on
Flemming
, a popular German TV crime series, in which she plays the part of Dr. Alissa Markus, a forensics specialist. No matter where we were reading that evening, she would spend the day filming in a studio somewhere—Berlin, I think—examining particularly nauseating corpses who had met particularly nasty ends (makeup, I hope!), then calmly take the train or the plane to rejoin us in the evening, where she would once again bring Flavia to life on the stage.

It was thrilling—there’s no other word for it—to sit at Anna’s elbow night after night, and hear her breathe life into Flavia in another language. She had the audience on the edges of their chairs: hanging on every word!

The menacing undertone of certain passages was perfect. Everywhere, we were swarmed by people queuing up for Anna’s autograph—which she signed with a fat felt-tip pen in a huge, swirling hand—on the title page of my book. I had to squeeze my tiny signature in underneath hers!

“Has it all been fun?” I’m often asked.

Yaroo!

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. The novel opens with Flavia going over the circumstances of her own death as she lies in a churchyard. What effect did this opening have on your reading, or your understanding of Flavia?

2. In interviews, Alan Bradley has often spoken of Flavia’s idealism and how her extensive understanding of chemistry is offset by a complete lack of understanding about family relationships. Discuss Flavia’s place within the de Luce family.

3. As Flavia shows Nialla and Rupert the way to Culverhouse Farm, they run into Mad Meg, who tells them, “the Devil’s come back to Gibbet Wood” and also quotes Matthew 10:16: “Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” What does Meg mean? Do you think she is trying to give Flavia a clue about what she’s seen?

4. The first two Flavia de Luce novels both deal, in part, with a crime occurring in the midst of a seemingly innocent pastime. In
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie,
it was stamp collecting. In
The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag,
it’s a puppet show. What do you suppose is the author’s intent in centering the mysteries around these activities?

5. Despite its lightness of tone,
The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag
is a dark novel, dealing with the death of a child and the deceptions that both preceded and followed that tragic event. How does Bradley balance the novel’s style with its subject matter?

6. How do you see Flavia being helped in her investigations by being an eleven-year-old? How is she hindered?

7. Flavia uses chemistry to solve crimes. Do you think Flavia would be just as adept a detective if her main interest were that of either of her sisters—books, like Daffy, or music, like Feely?

8. The title
The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag
comes from a Sir Walter Raleigh poem quoted in the front of the book. How does it fit the story?

9. Aunt Felicity is domineering and awful, despite the Colonel’s claims to the contrary; Cynthia is not the vicar’s helpful wife, but an “ogress.” Where do Flavia’s dark opinions of others come from? Is she purposefully undercutting the village’s charming veneer, or does she just not trust anyone?

10. Discuss the circumstances of Robin Ingleby’s death, and how Grace and Gordon Ingleby have lived for the five years since. Do you foresee an end to their grieving once the truth comes to light?

11. Does Flavia truly engage with the surrounding world, or is her connection merely one of intellectual curiosity?

12. Why does Flavia find it fairly easy to relate to Mad Meg while others in the village do not?

13. In an interview, Alan Bradley commented, “I don’t think we trust children enough anymore [or] leave them alone enough.… I recall being that age, and one of the greatest blessings was being left to myself. You find your own interests and amusements and pursue them—and that has a huge effect on the outcome of your life.” Are kids today given enough freedom? Or, is Flavia given too much?

14. Book reviewers have called Flavia a rougher, tougher Hermione Granger;
Prime Suspect
’s Jane Tennison as a child; a combination of Eloise and Sherlock Holmes; and Harriet the Spy by way of Agatha Christie, with a dash of Lemony Snicket and the Addams Family. How would you describe her?

15. Should Rupert’s killer be sent to prison? Were you satisfied by the way the mystery was solved? Were you surprised by the identity of the guilty party?

16. These novels are so entertaining thanks largely to the originality of the supporting characters, those villagers and interlopers who unknowingly come under Flavia’s microscope with every page turned. Who are the most interesting characters in the novel? Are there some you would like to see more of in future books?

17. What do you think the future holds for Flavia de Luce?

A Red Herring Without Mustard
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Alan Bradley