End in sight for popular series
The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place Alan Bradley Doubleday Canada
The clock is ticking down for Flavia de Luce. After this ninth entry in Alan Bradley’s successful series of the precocious young chemistry whiz, there’s only one more such detective novel to come, its publisher says.
That will be next year. Meanwhile Flavia herself has been maturing into an increasingly self-aware early adolescent.
But she’s not gone yet. Much in Flavia’s world has changed since she first appeared in the surprise 2009 bestseller The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.
She’s still living at her family’s somewhat decrepit estate, Buckshaw, in England. It’s 1952, and postwar deprivations have been tragically heightened by the recent death of her father, a former prisoner of war.
In the aftermath of the father’s death and the family’s great grief, family servant Dogger suggests a lengthy, scenic river journey. As she drifts her fingers through the river’s waters, Flavia gets them caught in what turns out to be the jaw of a corpse.
The body is identified as Orlando Whitbread, son of a clergyman who was executed for poisoning three parishioners and a young man known as a dramatic and promising actor.
The local constable calls the death an accidental drowning, but Flavia has examined the corpse herself and suspects murder.
Her pursuit of truth, enthusiastically and ably abetted by Dogger, involves the usual chemical and poison experiments for which she’s become famous in the Bradley series. She also, as she’s previously been known to do, indulges in moments of subterfuge, pretending to be as naive and innocent as any other young girl.
Not everyone, it turns out, considers her harmless, though, and as she always does, she confronts moments of real peril, as well as a clever ally or two.
She also conducts, with the help of the surprisingly knowledgeable Dogger, myriad experiments, even though she’s far from the laboratory with which she’s blessed at Buckshaw.
There is, in fact, a huge amount of chemistry-related information throughout the novel, which readers, depending on knowledge and interest levels, may find themselves skimming on their way to a satisfying conclusion.
Bradley, who was born in Toronto verging on 80 years ago, and lived most of his adult life in various parts of Canada, has had a relatively late-life success with his Flavia series. Now ensconced on the Isle of Man, he has ended The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place with an intriguing nod to where the 10th and final novel will head.
Then, when it’s done, it will be left to readers to imagine for themselves where sprightly, determined, sharp, bereft and vulnerable Flavia’s growing and grown life may take her.