Title: The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag: A Flavia de Luce MysteryAuthor: Alan Bradley
Last year's The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie was a book I thoroughly enjoyed. I thought that ten-year-old Flavia de Luce was wise beyond her years in an unrealistic way (I have a ten-year-old, after all), but I loved the community that Bradley created in the small English village where Flavia and her family live in the "big house." I also really liked that both Flavia's obsession (poisons) and her father's obsession (stamp collecting) played such a big role in the mystery she solved.
This time around, Flavia takes it upon herself to figure out who killed a traveling puppeteer. Bradley seems to be doing a little bit of resting on his laurels in Hangman's Bag. Many of the characters he introduced so charmingly in Sweetness (Dogger, the vicar, the postmistress, the librarian), reappear in this novel, but he doesn't really develop them to any degree. The mystery doesn't have anything to do with Flavia's unique talents (other than her deductive skills), and there's not a breathtaking cliffhanger in this novel either. If you absolutely loved Flavia's character in Sweetness, you may want to read Hangman's Bag, but if you're not already a fan, I doubt that this is the book for you.
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