I don't remember all that many details from the preceding book in this series, which is a pity, in that it would have helped me better understand this one. Whatever, Flavia is sent into exile in Canada. Sent to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in Toronto to be exact. She is a member of a mysterious "cult"/"spy ring"/something known as the Nide. But no one can let on that they're members of this group, other than hinting at something about pheasant sandwiches. It's all oblique.

Anyway, the day she arrives at Miss Bodycote's Female Academy, a body falls out of her chimney. Who is it? Could it be one of the former students who disappeared mysteriously? Suffice to say, Flavia wanders around a lot, thinks about chemistry a lot, and even does some experiments. Eventually she figures it all out, but for some reason, is deemed not Miss Bodycote material, and is shipped home, where, we presume, she'll have another adventure with her chemical laboratory and sisters.

I gave this 4*, but it should only be 3*+.

Interestingly, two days after I finished this book, my spouse and I were watching a video of Dorothy Sayers' Strong Poison. Towards the end, they set up a chemical apparatus to do arsenic analysis, almost exactly as described by Flavia's analysis in this book. Pretty fun to read about it, and then see it performed in "real life".

Another weirdness is that all the rooms at Miss Bodycote's Female Academy are named after famous women. Flavia lives in Edith Cavell. Edith Cavell was a nurse in WWI who saved people no matter what side they'd taken. She was executed. The very next book I read had a reference to Edith Cavell in it, something about Edith Cavell in drag.

"Banished!"

After Flavia is sent to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in Toronto to put some order in her life and to complete her informal studies, she is forced to face the outside world (even if it's just inside a school) for the first time without her family, her beloved Dogger, and her trustworthy bike Gloria. Although she was expecting everything to be different from home, the very first night she spends at the school, a dead body falls from the chimney and, of course, she just *has* to investigate :)

 

I really liked this story and I admired the author for taking a risk in removing his main character from the environment we all loved and know and write a story in a whole different setting, while still keeping the essence of the book intact. I didn't give this book 5 stars because even though this series always requires a certain level or credulity from the reader, there were things that seemed too far-fetched for my taste. Still, a great story and of course I'll continue reading this series!

 

Four stars!!

 

The last book had warned us readers, and this book confirmed our fears along with that of Flavia. She gets banished, to Miss. Bodycote’s Academy in Canada, to start her “training” which according to Aunt Felicity would fulfil her destiny, just like her mother. Flavia reaches Canada, accompanied by two “pills” called Dr. amd Mrs. Rainsmith. Mr. Rainsmith puts up his name in Flavia’s bad books as soon as he introduces himself,

“Dogger had once warned me to be wary of any man who introduced himself as “Mr.” It was an honorific, he said, a mark of respect to be bestowed by others, but never, ever, under any circumstances, upon oneself.”

On reaching Bodycote, Falvia gets assigned to a room called Edith Cavell. No sooner does she settles into her bed, she starts getting slapped, and then no sooner had she stopped and started the deduction process to find “why”, the assault-ress manages to bring down a body of a woman, which was hidden inside the chimney. As the head slides down the floor, the Chimney Sweepers come to dust, to clear away the puzzle regarding the dead woman, missing students and ghosts.

Flavia misses her village and her family, and Dogger. And we miss them as much as she does. But, to keep us away from our sadness we get to meet some entertaining students with nice names, a teacher suspected of homicide, a wheelchair bound mistress who keeps stuffed animals, birds and skulls in her laboratory and lastly a principal, who loves to punish her students in unimaginable ways.

Flavia transforms from a happy-go-lucky, and sometimes sad girl, into a “banished” adolescent far away from home, who realises that no letters are coming from home, except from Dogger. Who realises that the truth must be reached through facts, and only facts and that emotions should be kept at bay. And she also comes face to face with deep sadness. As such faced by a little girl who is far away from home, with no letters to look forward to, and no laboratory turn to.

“Magic doesn’t work when you’re sad.”

Flavia might have been heading towards new territory, but Alan Bradley stays rooted in his original position and presents us with a taut fast paced mystery, once a spy thriller and the next moment a gothic murder mystery, with “lights out after dark”, ghosts in the hall, and dead bodies never discovered, and if discovered, they are found stuffed inside chimneys. And he doesn’t disappoint when it comes to twists too. Not one, but two twists remain to be served in the last course.

P.S. Isn’t Dame Agatha Christie the greatest of them all?? Sometimes she looks to me like that Blues guitarist whose licks are sampled by everyone but no one gives him the credit for being a master musician. I think it’s for once and all that the tag attached to Christie, saying that she is a great plotter and a horrible writer, should be dropped. If she was a horrible writer then why would she be “sampled” hither and tither, and even if she IS a horrible writer, she still will remain the best. The Queen.

As Flavia said,

“Could I, by sheer chance, have stumbled upon one of those classic killings, such as those written about by Miss Christie, in which the murderer mocks the police by carrying out killings that mimic nursery rhymes or fairy tales?”

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!

There are choices in life which you are aware, even as you make them, cannot be undone; choices after which, once made, things will never be the same.

I'm not exactly sure what this was supposed to add to the series except for to serve as a reminder of just how much I loved the secondary characters of the previous books. All of the characters, excepting Flavia of course, that you have grown to love or love to hate (Feely and Daffy) are not in this book. Dogger does make a teeny tiny appearance via letter but it was not enough to satisfy. This of course causes both Flavia and readers to have homesickness for Buckshaw. I do love Flavia, but to send her off to the wilderness of Canada (just exaggerating, don't send me hate mail) by herself and pretty much shun her didn't sit well with me. Flavia seemed a bit different in this book and was pretty much the only character I cared about.

 

None of the secondary characters were interesting enough for me to care about them. I really thought that Mrs. Bannerman was going to be a stand out but she fell just as flat as the other characters. I just couldn't take all their secrecy and once the big reveal happened at the end I didn't feel that all that secrecy was called for. I am extremely happy with where Flavia was headed at the end. Quite frankly this pales in comparison to the other books in the series and is my least favorite (if you couldn't already tell from this review). Here's to hoping that the series gets the same magic back that I loved from the previous books.

 

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the galley.