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 Colonel de Luce is a distant, withdrawn man who has never gotten over the death of his wife.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.

Find that village!

Earlier this week, I was reading a feature about the 16 most picturesque villages in the world. Several interested me, including Bilbury, in England's Cotswolds and Niagara-on-the-Lake in Ontario. I'd like to visit those places, but the feature got me to thinking of some of the villages I've enjoyed spending time in while I read some of my favorite village mysteries.

St. Mary Mead

St. Mary Mead is home to Agatha Christie's Miss Jane Marple, though only three of the books (The Murder At the Vicarage, The Body In the Library and The Mirror Crack'd) take place there––and, to be fair, some stories. Still, when you think of Miss Marple, you can't help but think of St. Mary Mead.

I decided to see what Agatha Christie had in mind when she dreamed up St. Mary Mead. It turns out that's a bit of a controversial topic. Some devoted fans were outraged when the Granada television's 2004 production of The Murder At the Vicarage showed stationery indicating St. Mary Mead had an Oxfordshire location, which they howled was way too far from the sea. Despite the location on the stationery, this episode was filmed in the village of Hambleden, on the Thames in Buckinghamshire, which has often been used for filming village locations, notably in the Midsomer Murders series based on the Caroline Graham books.

Hambleden Mill

Hampshire, many insist, must be where St. Mary Mead "really" is. There are a lot of location clues in the books. It's supposed to be only 25 miles from London on a rail line that arrives at Paddington Station, on the west side of London, and it's 12 miles from the sea. Fans of Miss Marple suggest that Market Basing, the nearby market town described in the books, could be real-life Basingstoke, and Danemouth, a seaside resort town, could be real-life Bournemouth. There is a village in Hampshire called St. Mary Bourne, but nobody seems to think Christie had it in mind.

Outdoor scenes in the Miss Marple series starring Joan Hickson (my favorite Jane Marple) were filmed in the delightfully-named Nether Wallop, in Hampshire. This name doesn't refer to a whack on the rear end, despite the way it sounds. "Wallop" is apparently derived from old English words meaning valley and stream. "Nether" means further down. I'd definitely like to visit Nether Wallop, no matter how silly the name sounds or what it might mean.

Nether Wallop, Hampshire

Nether Monkslip

Speaking of Nethers, the new Max Tudor series by G. M. Malliett is set in Nether Monkslip, another fictional English village. Periphera talked about the book back in October, including the fact that the author's website includes a nifty interactive map of the village. Check it out: Interactive Map of Nether Monkslip. Having a map of the village in a village mystery is such a pleasure!

Bishop's Lacey

When precocious 11-year-old sleuth Flavia de Luce has pushed things a little too far at home at her family's country house, Buckshaw, she hops on her bicycle, Gladys, and heads into the village of Bishop's Lacey to see what kind of trouble she can get into there. Since it's the early 1950s, with rationing still in effect, there are real limits to the appeal of this particular village. Still, the countryside is lovely and there is always something entertaining going on in town, like a touring magic show that everyone turns out to watch. It's an electrifying experience, as you'll learn if you read The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag. The whole village also turns up at Buckshaw for a Christmas show put on by a visiting film crew in I Am Half-Sick of Shadows.

St. Denis, France

These English villages are all well and good, but sometimes you might be in the mood for more sun, more wine and good French food. That's when you should head for Martin Walker's St. Denis in the Dordogne, home of Bruno Courrèges, Chief of Police. It seems like the sun shines constantly, and you can relax at a café table with a glass of Ricard and water, watching the old-timers playing petanque.

St. Denis is a small village of fewer than 3,000 residents, but its main street has its wine shop, boulangerie, fromagerie, charcuterie and just about any -erie you could want to live the good life. The weekly open-air market is where you'll stroll around, picking up delicacies and the freshest foods to make your meal a celebration. Bruno is great at warning the stall-keepers when the EU food inspectors are on the prowl, so you'll be able to get the real home-grown thing without interference by the persnickety hygiene squad.

Three Pines, Québec

The village I'm most curious about is Louise Penny's creation in the Eastern Townships region of Québec province, near the Vermont border. When homicide detective Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Québec Sûreté goes there to investigate a murder, he notes that Three Pines doesn't appear on any maps. Most of its residents are Montrealers who found it by accident when they were looking for a place to start a new life––which they expected to find much further away.

And how fortunate Three Pines has been in some of those who found their way there. Myrna, a former psychologist, opens a bookstore. Olivier and Gabri open a B&B and a nearby bistro. Their businesses take their places around the village green with M. Béliveau's depannier (general store) and Sarah's boulangerie. Monks in the nearby countryside provide the rich, runny cheeses and the local farms the fresh produce and meat.

Villagers stroll across the green on a whim for a delicious meal or a drink at the bistro. In the winter, two fireplaces warm the room, and in the summer there's a sunny terrace with cheerful umbrellas where you can enjoy a fresh lemonade, a cold beer or a gin and tonic. So many of Sarah's freshly-baked croissants are eaten in this series that I sometimes want to bang my head in hungry frustration.

Villagers are shopkeepers, innkeepers, painters, poets, woodsmen and cabinetmakers. People with boring jobs seem to do them out of town. Or maybe they don't even live there. Well, wait. There is Billy Williams, who seems to be a jack-of-all-trades. I guess you have to have one of those.

Three Pines is so appealing that I've spent an inordinate amount of time poring over maps trying to figure out what village might be its model. Then I started reading Louise Penny's blog. She lives in a town called Sutton–––in the Eastern Townships. I could drive there in less than five hours. Get a grip, I tell myself. You're one road trip away from being a stalker.

Maybe I could cut the stalking trip short and just stop on the way in a Vermont village, Norwich, to visit another mecca of mine, King Arthur Flour.

At least there I could learn to make my own damn croissants!

* * *

Aside from their unnervingly high murder rate, don't these places sound like they should make a feature's list of most appealing fictional villages? Do you have your own favorite villages from mystery reading? Which fictional villages do you wish you could live in––or at least visit?

By the way, not that it really has anything to do with my theme today (other than general TGIF-ness), but I came across this "map" of funny (mostly sexual and scatalogical) place names in Britain and thought you might enjoy it. I wonder if there's a lot of pressure in Giggleswick to be cheerful all the time.