A Red Herring Without Mustard - Brossura

Bradley, Alan

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0385665873 ISBN 13: 9780385665872

Casa editrice: Anchor Canada, 2011

Riassunto

In the third installment of this bestselling, award-winning, sister-poisoning, bicycle-riding, murder-investigating, and utterly captivating series, Flavia de Luce must draw upon Gypsy lore and her encyclopaedic knowledge of poisons to prevent a grave miscarriage of justice.
 
“You frighten me,” the old Gypsy woman says. “Never have I seen my crystal ball so filled with darkness.” So begins eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce’s third adventure through the charming but deceptively dark byways of the village of Bishop’s Lacey. The fortune teller also claims to see a woman who is lost and needs help to get home—and Flavia knows it must be her mother Harriet, who died when Flavia was less than a year old. The Gypsy’s vision opens up old wounds for our precocious yet haunted heroine, and sets her mind racing in search of what it could mean.
 
When Flavia later goes to visit the Gypsy at her encampment, she certainly doesn’t expect to find the poor old woman lying near death in her caravan, bludgeoned in the wee hours. Was it an act of retribution by those who thought that the woman had abducted a local child years before? Certainly Flavia understands the bliss of settling scores; revenge is a delightful pastime when one has two odious older sisters. But how can she prove this crime is connected to the missing baby? Did it have something to do with the weird sect who met at the river to practice their secret rites?
 
While still pondering the possibilities, Flavia stumbles upon a corpse—that of a notorious layabout and bully she had only recently caught prowling about Buckshaw. The body hangs from a statue of Poseidon in Flavia’s very own backyard, and our unflappable sleuth knows it’s up to her to figure out the significance. Pedalling her faithful bicycle, Gladys, across the countryside in search of clues to both crimes, Flavia uncovers secrets both long-buried and freshly stowed—the dodgy dealings of a local ironworks, the truth behind the Hobblers’ secret meetings, her own ancestor’s ambitious plans—all the while exhausting the patience of Inspector Hewitt. But it’s not long before the evidence starts falling into place, and Flavia must take drastic action to prevent another violent attack.

From the Hardcover edition.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

“Flavia de Luce rides out of the pages of Alan Bradley’s new mystery and straight into our hearts. . . . [Bradley] has created one of the most endearing protagonists the traditional mystery genre, typified by the works of Agatha Christie, has seen in a very long time. . . . With this, his third novel in the Flavia de Luce series, Bradley . . . secures his position as a confident, talented writer and storyteller.”
— Elizabeth J. Duncan, The Globe and Mail

“[Flavia de Luce] remains irresistibly appealing as a little girl lost.”
— The New York Times

“A splendid romp through 1950s England led by the world’s smartest and most incorrigible preteen.”
— Kirkus, starred review

“Bradley’s outstanding third Flavia de Luce mystery set in post-WWII rural England . . . In this marvelous blend of whimsy and mystery, Flavia manages to operate successfully in the adult world of crimes and passions while dodging the childhood pitfalls set by her sisters.”
— Publishers Weekly, starred review

“The 11-year-old sleuth with a penchant for chemistry and a knack for discovering corpses triumphantly returns in this third installment of Bradley’s award-winning mystery series . . . Whether battling with her odious sisters or verbally sparring with the long-suffering Inspector Hewitt, our cheeky heroine is a delight.” 
— Library Journal
 
“. . . A spirited, surprisingly innocent tale, despite murky goings on at its center. Think of Flavia as a new Sherlock in the making.” —Booklist
 
“[The] idiosyncratic young heroine [Flavia] continues to charm.”
— The Wall Street Journal
 

From the Hardcover edition.

L'autore:

Alan Bradley was born in Toronto and grew up in Cobourg, Ontario. With an education in electronic engineering, Alan worked at numerous radio and television stations in Ontario, and at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University) in Toronto, before becoming Director of Television Engineering in the media centre at the University of Saskatchewan, where he worked for twenty-five years before taking early retirement in 1994.
 
Bradley was the first President of the Saskatoon Writers, and a founding member of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. His children’s stories were published in The Canadian Children’s Annual and his short story “Meet Miss Mullen” was the first recipient of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award for Children’s Literature.
 
For a number of years, he regularly taught scriptwriting and television production courses at the University of Saskatchewan. His fiction has been published in literary journals and he has given many public readings in schools and galleries. His short stories have been broadcast by CBC Radio, and his lifestyle and humour pieces have appeared in The Globe and Mail and the National Post.
 
Alan Bradley was also a founding member of The Casebook of Saskatoon, a society devoted to the study of Sherlock Holmes and Sherlockian writings. There, he met the late Dr. William A.S. Sarjeant, with whom he collaborated on the classic book Ms. Holmes of Baker Street (1989). This work put forth the startling theory that the Great Detective was a woman, and was greeted upon publication with what has been described as “a firestorm of controversy.” As he’s explained in interviews, Bradley was always an avid reader of mysteries, even as a child: “My grandmother used to press them upon us when we were very young. One of the first books she gave me was Dorothy L. Sayers’ Busman’s Holiday. I was profoundly influenced by it.”
 
Upon retirement, Bradley began writing full time. His next book, The Shoebox Bible (2006), has been compared with Tuesdays with Morrie and Mister God, This is Anna. In this beautiful memoir, Bradley tells the story of his early life in southern Ontario, and paints a vivid portrait of his mother, a strong and inspirational woman who struggled to raise three children on her own during tough times.
 
In July of 2007, Bradley won the Debut Dagger Award from the British Crime Writers’ Association for The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (2009), based on a sample that would become the first novel in a series featuring eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce. As Bradley has explained, it was the character of Flavia that inspired him to embark upon the project: “I started to write The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie in the spring of 2006. Flavia had walked into another novel I was writing as an incidental character, and she hijacked the book. Although I didn’t finish that book, Flavia stuck with me.” The Dagger award brought international attention to Bradley’s fiction debut, and since then the novel has won numerous awards, including the Agatha, the Macavity, the Dilys, and the Arthur Ellis awards for best first novel. The second book in the Flavia de Luce series, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag (2010), has also been met with great success. The novels in the series will be published more than thirty countries.
 
Alan Bradley lives in Malta with his wife Shirley and two calculating cats. He is currently working on the fourth novel starring Flavia de Luce, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows.

From the Hardcover edition.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Anchor Canada
• Data di pubblicazione: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0385665873
• ISBN 13: 9780385665872
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 416