I like reading first novels because for the most part book publishers are wary of publishing first-time authors. They feel that no one will buy a book by someone they’ve never heard of. The upside to this misguided logic is that first novels are a highly filter commodity–only the best get through–which means that first novels can sometimes be the best novels you read in a given year.
Such is the case with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.
Our heroine is 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist who knows the ins and outs of various poisons and their affect on the human body. The novel’s opening scene is of Flavia locked in a closet. Her contemptuous older sisters have bound and gagged her. A cunning lass, Flavia frees herself and sets out to poison her oldest sister via the beauty queen’s lipstick.
Set in the 1950s, Flavia’s Bucksaw home (a decaying English mansion with a chem lab in the attic) is the site of a murder. Flavia discovers the dead man in the cucumber patch. He happens to be the man her father argued with hours before. There’s a dead crow, a crazy cook, a gardener with post-traumatic stress, an affable detective, a couple of side stories of deception, and a lot of investigative work by 11-year-old Miss Flavia.
Quote:
Chapter 12
Feely and Daffy were sitting on a flowered divan in the drawing room, wrapped in one another’s arms and wailing like air-raid sirens. I had taken a few steps into the room to join in with them before Ophelia spotted me.
‘Where have you been, you little beast?’ she hissed, springing up and coming at me like a wildcat, her eyes swollen and red as cycle reflectors. ‘Everyone’s been searching for you. We thought you’d drowned. Oh! How I prayed you had!’
Welcome home, Flave, I thought.
‘Father’s been arrested,’ Daffy said matter-of-factly. ‘They’ve taken him away.’
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘How should we know?’ Ophelia spat contemptuously. ‘Wherever they take people who have been arrested, I expect. Where have you been?’
‘Bishop’s Lacey or Hinley?’
‘What do you mean? Talk sense, you little fool.’
‘Bishop’s Lacey or Hinley,’ I repeated. ‘There’s only a one-room police station at Bishop’s Lacey, so I don’t expect he’s been taken there. The County Constabulary is at Hinley. So they’ve likely taken him to Hinley.’
‘They’ll charge him with murder,’ Ophelia said, ‘and then he’ll be hanged!’ She burst into tears again and turned away.
For a moment I almost felt sorry for her.
You can just hear the villain muttering, ‘ I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!’
If you like Scooby-Doo, Miss Marple, The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency and quirky fiction, this is for you.
Full marks Alan Bradley on your first novel!
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie on Amazon
Published by Doubleday Canada