It's a Mad Mad World

Flavia De Luce is sent from her home at Buckshaw, England to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in Toronto, her mother’s alma mater. She is there to be inducted into the mysterious organization called Nide.  But a body comes crashing down out of the chimney the very first night at the school and Flavia can’t help trying to find out the identity of the dead body and who stuffed it in the chimney.

This is my first Flavia De Luce book, but not my last. I had no problem getting into the story, but of course since this is book seven were there bound to be things mentioned in the book that I knew nothing about. Like for instance why she was banished to Canada? Apparently there happened things in the last book concerning her mother that led to this. But anyway if we disregard that, everything else was not that hard to understand, she mentioned people but often I got an explanation to who she was referring to so that was ok.

I admit that I first thought the books story took place much earlier than 1950’s, around 1920-30’s perhaps. But then television was mentioned and that meant a bit later. Also I wasn’t sure about Flavias ages until someone mentioned that she was 12, I thought the she would be older. But she was fun; she was like a nosy Nancy Drew, but slightly more morbid. I was a bit weary of Flavia in the beginning, there is a thin line between precocious and obnoxious but she managed to stay on the precocious side throughout the book.     

The story was interesting and I liked the school setting. I have always been a bit fascinated by boarding school milieu, and for mystery books are boarding schools a perfect setting. It was a good read and I'm looking forward to read the previous six books in the series.

4 stars

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with a free copy for an honest review!