Review of Alan Bradley's As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley

Yes, the weather outside is frightful, but it's just perfect for starting on my anticipated winter book pile. I began with Alan Bradley's As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Delacorte, January 6, 2015), the seventh in the Flavia de Luce series. It was an enjoyable way to banish the howls of the wind outside.

To Flavia de Luce, "banished" is the saddest word in the English language. The word echoes through her mind much like the sound of great iron doors clanging closed behind her. Flavia is 12 years old, the youngest of the children born to the exceedingly eccentric de Luce family. The de Luces live in rural England in a rapidly decaying manor called Buckshaw. For years, Flavia has felt herself to be a cuckoo in the nest, because she has never gotten along well with her two elder sisters, Feely and Daffy.

Flavia's mother disappeared in the Himalayas when Flavia was just a baby, so she has no recollection of her. Colonel de Luce is a distant, withdrawn man who has never gotten over the death of his wife.

Shortly after Winston Churchill himself escorts the body of Harriet de Luce to Buckshaw, and the mystery of her death is solved (in The Dead In Their Vaulted Arches (Delacorte, 2014)), it is decided that even though Flavia is quite the smartest young person around, she is also bound for danger in her own way. The best solution seems to be to send her to her mother's old boarding school in Toronto, Canada. Despite the carrots of an up-to-date chemistry lab complete with spectrophotometer and access to a rare, fancy electron microscope, Flavia sees the move as a dire punishment. Banished, indeed.

Crossing the Atlantic in early September on the vessel RMS Scythia gives Flavia time to accustom herself to her fate at Miss Bodycote's Female Academy. When she arrives there it is late, as well as dark, and she is shooed off to her room for the night. Shortly after lights out, she gets a visit from a fellow boarder, Collingwood, who felt the need to meet the newcomer, despite the curfew.

When the headmistress, Mrs. Fawlthorne, hears something and comes to Flavia's room, it appears that Flavia's sojourn here might not last 24 hours. When Collingwood tries to hide in a chimney, she disturbs a corpse that has been lying in wait for this sort of nudge to set it catapulting out onto the floor, wrapped in a Union Jack.

Of course, dead bodies are one thing that Flavia is comfortable with, but it is the reaction to the discovery that sets her back. Expecting a nice mystery with a kindly police inspector who will undoubtedly require Flavia's skills and knowhow, Flavia sees little to no police response––and besides that, Collingwood seems to have disappeared. This girl is apparently only one of several students to have melted away from the Academy.

With all this grist to her mill, Flavia begins to grind away at the mystery, though everyone she talks to would rather hush her and tell her to trust no one. So Flavia has to rely on all her own special weapons.

Feigning stupidity is one of her specialties. She says that if stupidity were theoretical physics, then she would be Albert Einstein.

She knows how to talk to certain adults.  When there are things that both of them know, and both know the other knows, that can be talked about. But when there are things that both of them know that the other doesn't know they know, these things must not be spoken of.

Supernatural hearing is a trait that she inherited from her mother, and here at Miss Bodycote's it comes in very handy. An encyclopedic––albeit self-taught––knowledge of chemistry has also been a great tool in her armamentarium, greatly needed to discern the causes of death.

A very valuable part of her special skills is knowing when to appear to surrender and also when to step into the adult world and when to seek refuge in the mannerisms of a child.

The obstacles that Flavia must overcome are those natural hardships, that are part and parcel of being far away from home. She gets waves of homesickness that threaten to overwhelm her and this is aggravated by a species of culture shock. Having grown up with the classical music of the BBC, Flavia is stunned by the raucous sound of the pop music she hears all over the dorms. Those songs of the fifties like Sh-boom Sh-boom, Aba Daba Honeymoon and Mockin' Bird Hill make her wonder if she is going to be living with savages.

Accustomed as she is to all the secret spots of Buckshaw and its environs, she finds herself completely disoriented in Toronto. She doesn't even know where to buy a newspaper. With all these strikes against her, Flavia tells herself she must soldier on and this she does in delightful fashion as she proceeds to shake Miss Bodycote's Academy to its foundations.

All of the previous Flavia de Luce adventures surrounded the young sleuth with a grand supporting cast, like the mysterious Dogger, his father's batman, sisters who cut Flavia off at the knees several times a day and people in the village who can be manipulated like clay when Flavia needs something.

This book is a departure from that comfortable formula, but Flavia translates well––although there are times when she wonders why it is that even though she speaks English and they speak English, they don't always understand each other.

Winter Preview 2014-2015: Part Two

This season, we're expecting some wonderful books that will either chill you or thrill you. There is something for every reader. My choices tickled my fancy because they all have elements of humor in them. I am not sure where the phrase "the dead of winter" came from, but it might suggest that a good murder mystery is what is called for to lighten up the dark days.

Andrea Camilleri's sardonic sense of humor is always something to look forward to, and I tend to grab a translated copy hot off the presses. The most recent, The Brewer of Preston (translated from the Italian by Stephen Sartarelli; Penguin, December 30) is a departure from his usual Inspector Montalbano series, but it looks like it has Camilleri's custom blend of humor and misbehavior. It takes place in his favored location but in a different time. It is still Vigàta, Sicily, but the story takes place in 1874.

At this time, Vigàta is under the rule of the prefect of Montelusa, who has decided to build a new theater. The first production is to be an opera called The Brewer of Preston. You would think that the townspeople would be happy about this. Not necessarily so.

Apparently, the old cliché about not pleasing everybody holds true. The choice of this particular opera upsets several groups in the town. They cry that it's too obscure, it's too mediocre or it's not traditional.

Suddenly, cabals and gangs and cliques are formed, some having good intentions, others bent on mischief. The members of these brigades each want to put their own stamp on the opening of the theater. Plots, subplots, vendettas and conspiracies begin boiling throughout the town. The new theater becomes the target for variety of pranks and misdemeanors, including a fire that flashes through the building shortly after it opens.

Camilleri is a master of comic misadventure and this book should brighten any winter's day.

Sicily isn't the only place where rivalries and disputes are par for the course. In Norman Draper's Backyard (Kensington, November 25), which is set in the Midwestern suburban town of Livia, there are feuds and conflicts a-plenty to liven the days. This is a town where there's something in the water that has created more green thumbs than garden gnomes. This is also a town where gardening is the raison d’être and the competition for best garden is keen.

Nothing is more likely to upset the status quo than the announcement about a best yard contest run by a local nursery. It's not long before the gardening elite begin to engage in a not-very-subtle form of suburban warfare. Aside from the bragging rights, there's to be prize money. Many of the gardens reflect their obsessive owners' personalities and there are reputations and more at stake––like relationships and marriages.

It is a charged landscape as late-night surreptitious forays into competitors' gardens result in sabotage perpetrated on innocent flowers and imitation Edens. The story promises to be darkly hilarious, with descriptions of beautiful plants and flowers that will have you dreaming of spring.

I can think of a lot of reasons to avoid a Russian winter, but Elena Gorokhova has better ones and, in a memoir, she tells the story of why she left Mother Russia during the Cold War era of the 1980s to come to America.

In Russian Tattoo: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster, January 6), Elena recreates how, when she was in her twenties, she met and married an American teacher, Robert, who moved her to Austin, Texas. She was anxious to leave the privations and the day-to-day difficulties of living in a struggling country. It turned out to be a case of "marry in haste and repent at leisure," though, because Robert was basically cold and detached. Not that Elena missed her mother––she didn't––but in Texas she was a fish out of water, wearing her homespun dress and trying to overcome the negative images that the locals had of Russians.

Her mother-in-law, who lived in Princeton, New Jersey took her in and things began to look up. She found her feet, teaching English as a second language to Russian immigrants in New York City, and a new romance came into her life. I'm looking forward to this depiction of the immigrant's point of view, with a mix of rays of sunshine and some frost.

I always look forward to Alan Bradley's latest. This year it is As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust: A Flavia de Luce Novel (Delacorte, January 6).

When we last left Flavia, she had been informed that she was going to be sent to a boarding school in Canada once attended by her mother, Harriet. Being sent to Miss Bodycote's Female Academy seems to Flavia to be a punishment as well as banishment, but the budding chemist and sleuth is now 12 years old and her family feels the move will help her learn about things that she would never encounter at home.

After crossing the ocean and part of the North American continent, she begins to settle in her new digs when a charred and mummified body tumbles out of the bedroom chimney. This is like a gift to Flavia and she's raring to go on the hunt for the victim's identity at the same time as she tries to make new friends––maybe a few enemies.

Aside from rumors that the Academy is haunted and that the headmistress is an acquitted murderer, Flavia hears that several girls have disappeared from the school without a trace. Detecting is mother's milk to Flavia, and she is up to the task as she is still unaware about what her destiny has in store for her. Go Flavia!

If Robertson Davies's World of Wonders or Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants fired your imagination, you might be intrigued by Paddy O'Reilly's The Wonders (Washington Square/Pocket, February 10).

What do Leon, a young 20-year-old man with severe heart disease; Kathryn, an Irish woman with Huntington's disease; and Christos, a failing Greek performance artist, have in common? For one thing, their lives are close to over and, for another, they want to keep on going. Leon is given a mechanical heart, which is a thing of astonishing beauty created from brass and titanium, and its lub-dub can be seen through the door built into his chest. Kathryn gets gene manipulation that cures her disease but causes her to grow thick black wool over her body. Christos had removable ceramic wings implanted in his back.

They all come under the influence of Rhona Burke, the daughter of a well-known American circus impresario. She wants to turn Leon into a superstar. Already hounded by journalists, they are deluged with offers of fame, money and immortality. She promises that they will not be sideshow freaks. Then she whisks them away to a Vermont mansion surrounded by walls and barbed wire.

Under her expert guidance, the three become The Wonders. It isn't long before they become a global sensation. As they become celebrities, without having done anything to deserve it, the trio also quickly finds that fame is addicting and full of loneliness but, even worse, it is dangerous.

These are modern-day Frankensteins, monsters not exactly of their own making. Whether done willingly for the sake of art, unwittingly as a result of medical treatment or for the sake of staying alive, there are consequences to the actions that transformed them.

The story revolves mostly around Leon, who is shy, quiet and otherwise unremarkable. He struggles with anxiety and, at the same time, the treachery of fame. But the main actors of the tale are the public, who fawn over the Wonders and then hate them, abuse them, stalk them and adore them; that's the way of fame in our age.

We are going to get well acquainted with severe weather days in the next few months. This is a story that should transport you to a very different reality.

A slightly quicker read is Mystery of the Dinner Playhouse (Five Star, January 21), by Mike Befeler.

An unexpected side effect of retirement is that you end up either driving your spouse crazy with all the together time or your spouse begins to get on your own nerves. (Or both!)

Gabe Tremont has retired from the police department, and his wife's reaction to his being underfoot is to make a very long list of things he can do outside the house. The best thing on the list is an evening out at the Bearcrest Mystery Dinner Playhouse. Dave suspects that, as is the convention, the butler in the play would be the villain. Gabe gets a surprise after the play is over when the butler, actor Peter Ranchard, is found murdered offstage, poisoned with cyanide.

Gabe jumps back into the saddle, takes charge of the case and finds he enjoys the chase more than retirement.

Murder mysteries about theater folk are fun because the characters are usually eccentric, and larger than life. Befeler has been writing a humorous geezer series and now he brings that style to a new character and story.

Wanted: One Strong, Smart, Sassy Woman

Be warned. Today's post is just one long complaint. I'm feeling distinctly grumpy about female protagonists in recent mysteries. I've reached the point of throwing the book across the room with three series I used to read regularly. Here is my lineup of female sleuths no longer welcome in my library:

Gemma James. I used to devour Deborah Crombie's series featuring Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James of Scotland Yard. Crombie wrote some terrific mysteries, like Dreaming of the Bones and Kissed a Sad Goodbye.  She has a real talent for plotting and conveying a strong sense of time and place. Eventually, Crombie developed a personal relationship between Duncan and Gemma, and now they're married and sharing their children.

With Duncan and Gemma no longer work partners, Crombie seems to have chosen to depict more of their home life as a way to keep up with them as a pair. But the swap of domestic detail for detective collaboration is a poor exchange. In her most recent book, No Mark Upon Her, Crombie includes such teeth-gritting scenes as kids squabbling in the car, Duncan and Gemma negotiating childcare responsibilities and, in case I wasn't already in complete despair, a birthday party for a three-year-old.  It could only have been worse if she'd added in the children singing. (Yes, W. C. Fields has nothing on me.) When Crombie can spare the time for the actual crime story, the plotting is intriguing, tight and twisty. But for me, the price to be paid for the mystery plot is now way too high. I'm sure there are readers who want to be a fly on the wall observing the details of the couple's domestic life, but I'm not one of them.

Mary Russell. Back when I read Laurie R. King's The Beekeeper's Apprentice, the first book in her series featuring bluestocking Mary Russell, I was charmed. The 15-year-old orphan Russell is impatiently waiting out her minority in the care of a disagreeable aunt when she meets Sherlock Holmes, who is engaged in beekeeping while in semi-retirement in Sussex. I loved the relationship struck up between the two, as he trains her in the art of detection. Naturally, I went on to read succeeding books in the series, which are exciting adventures in locations as far-flung as Dartmoor, Palestine and San Francisco. But one constant was always the erudite and entertaining banter between Holmes and Russell, and their close sleuthing partnership.

A few books ago, King began sending Holmes and Russell off in different directions in their investigations. They would still usually have some correspondence and would eventually meet up and work together, but the characters on their own missed the spark they had when together. In the latest book in the series, Pirate King, Holmes is out of the picture almost entirely, until more than three-quarters of the way through the book. The story is told mostly through a first-person narrative by Russell, who comes across as a self-satisfied, humorless prig. I'm thinking this book is meant to set the stage for the series to become entirely Russell-focused. If so, I'm out.

Maisie Dobbs. This is another series that I liked at the outset, but whose protagonist I have come to view as tiresome. She started out being spunky; a largely self-educated working-class girl who, after serving as a nurse in the Great War, sets up her own detective agency. The ninth book in the series is just about to be published, but I gave up with number seven, The Mapping of Love and Death. Life is too short to read books––even well-written books––about a character as mopey as Maisie Dobbs. She is never-endingly sobersided, has virtually no real personal life and I just couldn't take her glumness anymore. In the same vein is Charles Todd's Bess Crawford. I read the first book in that series and that was more than enough. If either one of these women cracked a smile, their faces might break.

So where are the good female protagonists these days?

Back in the 1990s, I used to enjoy Lauren Henderson's Sam Jones series. Sam was a London sculptor with an extremely lively personal life who was always stumbling into bizarre and threatening situations. Sam could never resist poking her nose in, no matter the risk. Book titles like Black Rubber Dress, Freeze My Margarita and Strawberry Tattoo convey the cheeky style of this series. Lauren Henderson also collaborated with Stella Duffy to produce an anthology of bad-girl crime fiction called Tart Noir. (Great title!) Alas, the last Sam Jones mystery was published in 2001 and I have given up hope for more.

Liza Cody was also a favorite in my (relative) youth. She wrote two gritty series, one featuring Anna Lee, a London PI, and another with Eva Wylie, a wrestler and security guard. Cody seems to be done with these series, though she is still writing. Maybe I should check out her latest nonseries book, Ballad of a Dead Nobody, about the mystery of the death of a female founder of a rock-and-roll band.

And I can't forget another old favorite, Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski. Over the years, though, I've gone off her. Or maybe not so much her as the books, which came to feel dominated by social issues. What do you say, should I go back and try again?

I've also enjoyed Sujata Massey's Rei Shimura and Cara Black's Aimée Leduc. Both of these are still good, but it appears that the Rei Shimura series is most likely over, and the Aimée Leduc series has become to seem somewhat formulaic. Kerry Greenwood's 1920s Melbourne, Australia, flapper/sleuth, Phryne Fisher, is a hoot, but the books are just bits of fluff.

I used to like Margaret Maron's Sigrid Harald series, but I could never get into her Deborah Knott books. Her new book, Three-Day Town, puts the two characters together for the first time, but to the detriment of both. The book can only be described as a disappointment to fans of both protagonists.

It's a sad state of affairs when one of the feistiest and most interesting female protagonists is an 11-year-old girl––by whom I mean, of course, Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce. But as lively and amusing as Flavia is, I want to read about a grownup woman who is vibrant, intelligent (like Harriet Vane), has a sense of humor, doesn't moon around about men and children (I'm looking at you, Rebecca Cantrell's Hannah Vogel), and who doesn't make a habit of endangering herself with too-stupid-to-live decisions (that bad trait applies to all-too-many female protagonists).

But it is possible to go too far in the strong female protagonist vein. In Sophie Littlefield's A Bad Day for Sorry, Sara Hardesty is a survivor of domestic abuse who runs a sewing shop in Missouri and, as a sideline, acts as amateur sleuth and a vigilante against abusive men. This book was nominated for several awards, but I was not charmed by a character whose investigative methods consist of beating up and intimidating people. Another strong character––one whose methods don't constitute felonies––is Helene Tursten's Detective Inspector Irene Huss, who is a 40-something police detective in Göteborg, Sweden. Huss is smart and likable, as she navigates through the hazards of a sexist work environment and a sometimes challenging family life. Unfortunately, the novels featuring Huss are of the grimly nordic variety, with too big a helping of disturbingly graphic violence for my taste.

There are several female secondary characters I admire and would like to see more of, like Diane Fry of Stephen Booth's series featuring Ben Cooper, Ellen Destry of Garry Disher's series featuring Hal Challis, and Annie Cabbot of Peter Robinson's Alan Banks series. I'm not a fan of Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers of Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley series. Havers is her own worst enemy and it irritates me to see her shoot herself in the foot repeatedly.

So, here we are. I've trashed a bunch of female protagonists––I hope not too many readers' favorites––and bemoaned the disappearance or too-little-appearance of women characters I like. But it can't be hopeless. I'm convinced there must be some female protagonists going strong out there. Two possibilities, and I'd welcome comments on them, are Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak and Julia Spenser-Fleming's Claire Ferguson.

I hope to find somebody who can restore my faith in the female sleuth. Ruth Rendell, once asked about her choice to have a male protagonist in her Inspector Wexford series, quoted Simone de Beauvoir: "Like most women I am still very caught up in a web that one writes about men because men are the people and we are the others." Reminded of that statement in 2009, Rendell said that times had changed, replying: "I don't think that our sex is the people or the others, we're all the people. Perhaps because women are taken more seriously now, not just by men but by each other." I agree that times have changed and it's high time we had a female protagonist as compelling as some of my male favorites, like Inspector Wexford, Commissaire Adamsberg, Armand Gamache, or even Andy Dalziel. (The last of whom, given the recent sad death of Reginald Hill, is now the late lamented Andy Dalziel, I suppose.)

Note: I received free review copies of Deborah Crombie's No Mark Upon Her and Laurie R. King's Pirate King.

Top Reads of 2011

There are certain subjects you know you shouldn't raise in company if you want to avoid unpleasantness. Politics, religion, how to raise children, just for starters. Among the Material Witnesses, one subject is guaranteed to prompt pained howls from Georgette Spelvin: best-books lists. For some reason, she just hates making lists of favorite authors and reads.

I enjoy looking back over the year and thinking about the books I've read and how they stacked up. I keep a notebook of the books I've read, but all I do is write down the author and title. If I really liked it, I put an asterisk next to it. One of my book club friends has a card file and has a comment card in it for every book she's read for the last 30 years or so. I'm not that organized, but I wish I did have a record of every book I'd ever read, except for the part where people would look at me like I was some kind of compulsive nutcase.

But back to the subject at hand. This is the time of year when the newspapers, magazines and websites tell us what were the best books published in the past year. I always look at those lists and consider myself lucky if I've read 20% of them. It makes me feel like a cultural deadbeat, but that somehow doesn't ever seem to result in my rushing out to get the books they rate the highest.

I'm going to list my top reads of this year, more or less in order, and ask our readers to do the same in comments. They don't have to be 2011 publications; just books you read this year and particularly enjoyed. I think I can guarantee nobody will feel like a cultural deadbeat after reading my list.

Top Mystery Reads

Louise Penny: A Trick of the Light (Maybe not quite as good as Bury Your Dead, but still terrific. Of course, the Armand Gamache series is my weakness.)

Kate Atkinson: Started Early, Took My Dog (This entry in the Jackson Brodie series picks up shortly after the Masterpiece Mystery! dramatization left off. Atkinson is one of the best writers out there.)

Cyril Hare: An English Murder (A classic British country house murder mystery, but with incisive commentary on British attitudes about class, ethnicity and religion.)

Fred Vargas: An Uncertain Place (Yet another quirky title in the Inspector Adamsberg series.)

Jill Paton-Walsh: The Attenbury Emeralds (A continuation of Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey series.)

Peter Lovesey: Stagestruck (This book about murder in a theater in Bath is part of the Peter Diamond series.)

G. M. Malliet: Wicked Autumn (This is the first in a new series featuring a former MI-5 agent who is now an English country vicar.)

Robert Barnard: A Stranger in the Family (There's nobody like Barnard. This is his 28th standalone mystery and he's already published another one this year. Not to mention his three series and his four books written as Bernard Bastable.)

Alan Bradley: I Am Half Sick of Shadows (Flavia de Luce at Christmastime.)

Top Non-Mystery Fiction Reads

Anthony Powell: A Dance to the Music of Time (Four big volumes telling the story of British society and the empire from the 1930s to the 1970s.  I was mesmerized by it and didn't know what to do with myself for weeks after I finished it.)

Muriel Spark: A Far Cry From Kensington (One of the most mordantly witty books ever.)

Adam Johnson: The Orphan Master's Son (An tour-de-force about contemporary life in North Korea.)

Jane Gardam: Old Filth (Funny, sad, touching tale of the life of Sir Edward Feathers. Like A Dance to the Music of Time, it's as much about the British Empire as it is about the characters' lives.)

Stephen King: 11/22/63 (On one level, a time-travel book about trying to prevent the JFK assassination. On a deeper level, about connectedness.)

Chad Harbach: The Art of Fielding (A coming-of-age story about baseball and much more.)

Fannie Flagg: I Still Dream About You (Fannie Flagg is one of my guilty pleasures and this book was just as satisfying as the rest.)

D. E. Stevenson: Miss Buncle's Book (A real find.  Set in England in the 1950s and about a spinster who decides to write a book to make some much-needed money. She can only write what she knows, so she writes a thinly-disguised book about the people in the village. Complications ensue. This title has been issued by Persephone Books, which reprints neglected classics of 20th-century authors, usually women.)

Top Nonfiction Reads

Erik Larson: In the Garden of Beasts (Novelistic story of a college professor made ambassador to Germany in the 1930s Nazi era, and his adult daughter who accompanied him to Berlin, along with his wife and adult son.)

Siddhartha Mukherjee: The Emperor of All Maladies (A compellingly readable biography of cancer.)

Laura Hillenbrand: Unbroken (Astonishing story of Louis Zamperini, who went from juvenile delinquent to Olympic runner, to POW of the Japanese in World War II.)

Richard J. Evans: The Coming of the Third Reich (You'd think there isn't any more that can be said on the subject, but Evans proves that wrong.)

Nella Last's War (Just before the outbreak of World War II, Britain established the Mass Observation Project, in which ordinary people were asked to write diaries and answer questionnaires about their views on contemporary events.  Nella Last, an ordinary housewife in a seacoast town, wrote a diary that is full of everyday detail, but also reveals her deepest feelings about married life, her children, the war, her country, her neighbors, the role of women and more.)

Now it's your turn . . .