Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd /

Flavia de Luce is one of crime fiction's most engaging and original sleuths. Growing up in a crumbling mansion with two elder sisters (who are both, in their own way, horrible to her), a father who seems perennially lost in contemplation of the past and haunted by fleeting memories of her mother, who died mysteriously in the Himalayas when Flavia was a baby, her refuge has always been an obsession with chemistry; an interest that has proved very useful whenever unexplained death has come to the otherwise sleepy village of Bishop's Lacey, which is surprisingly often. But the latest mystery to puzzle Bishop's Lacey's eccentric inhabitants is perhaps the strangest and darkest yet, and it will test Flavia's budding investigative skills to the limit - not to mention put her in terrible danger.