The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches

Flavia de Luce is back!  The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches (#367) is the sixth in this series by Alan Bradley which I absolutely love.  I can't be the only one either, since I saw in Sunday's paper that it's Number Six on the New York Times Best Seller List.  I read the first two books in this series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag before I began writing this blog, (And that's how I would recommend you read this series.) but you can read my posts on A Red Herring Without Mustard from 3/13/11, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows from 11/26/11 and Speaking from Among the Bones from 2/10/13.  I don't normally list out all the books in a series like this, but eleven year old Flavia de Luce just tickles me with her dreadful precociousness with all things chemical, her on-going warfare with her two older sisters, her insatiable curiosity and tendency to meddle and her oddly vulnerable yet prickly personality.

In her previous outings, Flavia has investigated murders in and around her home on the crumbling English estate of Buckshaw shortly after World War II.  Money is scarce since the fortune which ran the estate belonged to Harriet de Luce.  Flavia's mother went missing in Tibet on a climbing expedition when Flavia was still an infant.  In financial limbo, Flavia's father has finally been forced to place Buckshaw up for sale.  No sooner than the "For Sale" signs are hammered into the ground outside the gates when word comes that Harriet has been found.

Amidst a turmoil of emotions Harriet at long last arrives at Buckshaw's private rail station with a government escort.  One of them approaches Flavia with a mysterious warning for her father.  Only moments later, the tall stranger is crushed beneath the train.  Did he slip, or was he pushed?  Why was Winston Churchill there?  And has Flavia met her match in her previously unknown younger cousin Undine?  Family secrets aplenty here in this book that reads more like a thriller than your average British cozy mystery.  Flavia is up to her usual schemes, but she's beginning to mature - she has to, in light of the events of this story.

I didn't put it down until I finished every last word, and was elated to know that there will be more adventures to come!  Too bad I have to wait another year for it!!!