The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Series: Flavia de Luce Mysteries, Book 1
By: Alan Bradley / Narrated By: Jayne Entwistle
Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
Flavia is an endearing character, and at no point did I wish to throttle her…
It’s cuz of this see, I do NOT like precocious children, which is rather unfortunate as I work with children but praise be to GOSH that precious few are precocious. I mention this because I absoLUTEly deTESTed the main character in My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, a story with a 7-year old going on an oblivious 30-something. THAT little girl had me wielding ice picks at my listening device, my trusty iPhone.
But I have to tell you that p’raps I would’ve been less homicidal towards that youngun had she NOT been voiced by one Joan Walker who portrayed her with such snide and relentless tones. Here in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the WONderful Jayne Entwistle does the honors for our dear Flavia de Luce, a (Yup, preCOcious) 11-years old going on Poison Mongering 30-something. Entwistle just makes EVERYthing better, and I never once wanted to garrote young Flavia, even as she was bicycling off pellmell to solve a murder, getting herself into ill-advised scrapes, and wheedling information outta grownups who shoulda known better. Ms. Entwistle just made Flavia aDORable.
Flavia’s awesomeness is further enhanced by author Alan Bradley’s development of her character, by Flavia’s all consuming passion for chemistry and by her search for chemical compounds to cause grave distress to her sister(s) and her search for the Perfect Poison. She has an inquisitive mind, a sharp tongue that is saucy without being in-your-face disrespectful, and she’s just delightful. Because through it all are threads of loneliness and her search for a sense of family.
It’s 1950s post WWII England, and Flavia lives with her two self-absorbed sisters who sometimes get back at her daring deeds of destruction by doing stuff like, say, locking her in closets. The book opens where we find Flavia picking a lock, something Dogger, the PTSD-rattled handyman who shelters on the estate, taught her to do. Flavia would dearly like to be loved, hopes that her long-dead mother once found delight in her, but as she’s pretty much left to her own designs, she lives in her mind and in her laboratory.
All of that changes when a dead bird shows up on their doorstep, a postage stamp stuck to the poor dearly departed creature’s beak, and then a man in the throes of death is discovered later in the cucumber patch. The sharp Flavia detects something odoriferous in the man’s last gasps, but she’s helpless as he succumbs to whatever murdered him most foul.
And it’s off to the races with characters coming in, suspects and sergeants, an investigator who soon discovers that Flavia is one sharp cookie…. who’s NOT to be tooo trusted… and all sorts of people coming out of the woodworks to confess to the crime. Flavia’s father is arrested, and soon Flavia is told of a stamp, a certain two-of-a-kind that has been missing, but that lo and behold, turns up. NATurally THAT’S due to some feral sleuthing done by Flavia as she SHAMElessly follows leads, gets into scrapes, picks locks, is thrashed soundly, and finds her own dear self in dire need of help and friendship.
What I liked was that here there is no grand Lemme Tell Ya How I Did It by our perpetrator as I’m discovering now that I’m getting all into Mysteries and such all. Those scenes do get boring, and they strike me as the laziest of writing (Something I’d not cop to before as I desperately neeeeded to have things spelled out for me in the early Mystery Listening days). No, here, Bradley discloses clue after clue slooooowly and only after much sleuthing. It’s not until the very end with Flavia hashing things out in a furtive manner that we get an inkling as to what truly went on. Even then, Flavia plays things close to her vest, ulterior motives abounding, but which were really quite sweet. She’s just looking to make her distant father happy, even for a single bright and shining moment.
The writing is clever without being contrived, and it’s all cute without being cloying. Flavia refers to her sisters as Daffy and Feely as they’ve all been given riDICulous names, and she’s always plotting against them tho’ she’d dearly like a hug. This was just soooo sweet, and yup, I’m so TOTALLY getting into these here Cozy Mysteries. With Jayne Entwistle narrating, and what with this first audiobook having been on sale at Chirpbooks, and what with the second and third going on sale over on Audible, I can practically shout that I WILL get on to the next in the series, most happily!
A new series! Always a Booooo cuz there are so many audiobooks and so little time. But ALWAYS a mighty Huzzah! as I do so LOVE characters to look forward to!
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