The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

After I read The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, I decided that I needed to go back and read the previous books. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is the first book in the series and I found it really interesting.

Flavia de Luce is 11 and annoying adorable. I find her adorable, but her older sisters find her annoying and they bully her quite often. But with her interest in Chemistry, Flavia has her own unique ways of getting her own back.

Wait, that's not the plot of the book (though it does start out that way - with Flavia bound and shoved into a cupboard by her as sisters. The actual plot though, is concerned with Flavia trying to figure out who killed the mysterious man who died in her garden. But since she's an 11 year old girl, the police force isn't too keen on her 'help'. That doesn't stop her though.

Hint: It has something to do with stamps. And history.

I must say though, Flavia's sisters are much meaner that I ever was. At least, I don't think I was that mean to my younger sisters, but that may be a matter of perception. Ok, at the very least, I've never bounded and locked my sisters in a cupboard.

My favourite part of the book has to be the narrative voice. Flavia is such a precocious child, which actually allowed for fairly difficult ideas to be expressed by a naive voice. The contrast was well-done, although at times, it veered towards being over-the-top. But it is a difficult voice to handle, so props for doing it well most of the time.

A wide variety of characters were introduced, and I can see that many of them are going to be recurring characters. Well, I know because I've read the latest book, and it was fun to see how those characters were introduced.

I can't wait to read more of this series!