This book is creeping me out in all the wrong ways. This is my 6th Flavia De Luce book. I enjoyed the first five. This one changes the direction of the series, which is fine, but it also changes the character of Flavia De Luce, which isn't.

 

I'd expected a cozy mystery. Something where eleven-year-old Flavia uses her unique intelligence and her knowledge of poisons to solve a murder while trying to find a place to be happy in her fractured family.

 

What I got is an eleven-year-old girl planning to resurrect the very dead mother who is lying in state in their stately home.

 

I also got some kind of bizarre spy theme squeezed in, presumably to fuel future books.

 

I find the plot around the mother creepy. I don't want to work through whatever embarrassing or grief provoking outcome it's going to produce.

 

The spy thing doesn't interest me. Flavia as a 1950s English version of Spy Kids doesn't sound appealing.

 

So I'm abandoning the book and the series.

 

My bingo game is going to suffer for this. I used a Transfiguration Spell to put Cozy Mystery on my board and now I've DNF'd two books in a row that I was reading for that square.

 

I'm going to try "Real Murders", the first Aurora Teagarden book and see if I can make it all the way through that. 

 

This is my sixth Flavia de Luce book and something is off about it.

 

I've always liked Flavia but this time she seems not to be entirely herself.

 

Of course, her dead mother's body has just been returned to the family and is lying in state in the Hall, so eleven-year-old Flavia could be forgiven for being more emotional than usual but she seems to be surrendering science to magic, I never thought I would hear Flavia say something as stupid as:

 

"It was a brilliant idea, and because it was scientific, it simply could not fail."

 

I'm a little concerned with where this book is going. At the moment, the mystery doesn't seem that cozy.

 

Series: Flavia de Luce #6

 

This one was a bit weird and seems to be taking the series in a new direction. I'm not entirely sure if I like the direction, but I still enjoy listening to the books. 

So, it seems that the body of Flavia de Luce's mother, Harriet, has been found in a glacier in the Himalayas and is to be returned to their estate, Buckshaw, for a proper interment. When the train rolls into the village, someone gets crushed under the wheels of the train just moments after the victim gave Flavia a weird, coded message.

So, we have the mystery of how Flavia's mother died and on top of it the new death. Did the man merely trip and fall under the train or was he pushed? Is there some vague relationship between the newly deceased and Flavia's mother, who had been gone some ten years? Well, Flavia tries to figure these things out, while also trying to work out a chemical approach to revivifying her mother.

I dunno, it was ok, but the weakest so far of the half dozen Flavia de Luce books I've read.

How much did I love this story!!  My favorite of the series so far.  The writing is superb, the storyline engaging, and Flavia and household are always fun to spend time with.  When I listen on Audible (on my work commute) Jayne Entwistle brings it all to life perfectly - she is an absolute delight to listen to.