The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag

by Jennifer Muirhead (follow)

Fiction (373)      Crime (31)      Mystery (29)      Detective (10)     

In 1950's Britain, in the small country town of Bishop's Lacy, eleven year old Flavia de Luce finds herself involved in investigating another murder. In this, the second book of the Flavia De Luce mysteries, the famous puppeteer, Rupert Polson is found dead in the middle of a performance of Jack and the Beanstalk in the crowded church hall. Flavia takes it upon herself to ferret out the townspeople's secrets and work out how this death might be connected to that of a six year old boy found hanging in the woods five years earlier.

Flavia is a fun character, though occaisionally I cringe to think of what a little brat she is from the perspective of her father, who must deal with her doing things like destroying her braces to use them to pick a lock or poisoning her sister as childish revenge for being told she was adopted. I think the worst I ever did to my brother was whack him in the knee with a plastic sword!

The mystery was quite an intriguing one which kept me guessing and I the cast of minor characters are interesting too, especially Dieter, the German former POW obsessed with the Brontë sisters and Dogger, the de Luce's butler/gardener who suffers from post traumatic stress disorder from his own time as a prisoner of war.

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag is a well constructed cosy mystery, in the manner of Agatha Christie. It has an interesting cast of characters including a plucky young heroine whose further adventures I will look forward to reading about.

Rating: 4/4
Published: 2010

#Fiction
#Mystery
#Crime
#Detective

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