The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches: A Flavia de Luce Novel, Book 6 Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00H7KWVLC | Format: EPUB
The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches: A Flavia de Luce Novel, Book 6 Description
On a spring morning in 1951, 11-year-old chemist and aspiring detective Flavia de Luce gathers with her family at the railway station, awaiting the return of her long-lost mother, Harriet. Yet upon the train's arrival in the English village of Bishop's Lacey, Flavia is approached by a tall stranger who whispers a cryptic message into her ear. Moments later, he is dead, mysteriously pushed under the train by someone in the crowd. Who was this man, what did his words mean, and why were they intended for Flavia? Back home at Buckshaw, the de Luces' crumbling estate, Flavia puts her sleuthing skills to the test. Following a trail of clues sparked by the discovery of a reel of film stashed away in the attic, she unravels the deepest secrets of the de Luce clan, involving none other than Winston Churchill himself. Surrounded by family, friends, and a famous pathologist from the Home Office - and making spectacular use of Harriet's beloved Gipsy Moth plane, Blithe Spirit - Flavia will do anything, even take to the skies, to land a killer.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 8 hours and 7 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Random House Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: January 14, 2014
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00H7KWVLC
I'm seriously at a loss for words about how to write a review for this book. The book reads as if this is the final book in the series and that has left me in a kind of shock. I thought Flavia would go on for years and years because at this point in her fictional life she isn't even twelve years old yet. Maybe I'm wrong. Goodness knows I hope I'm wrong! Maybe a new direction is coming. Whatever it is, I just hope Alan Bradley keeps this story alive.
This is the book in the series that is all about Harriet. Have you ever been so involved with the characters in a book series that what happens to them can make you cry? Sometimes the happenings are good, sometimes bad, but they can still bring tears to your eyes. I had to put this book down and walk away from it for a while because it moved me so much. And yet, I cannot possibly say in this review what it was that touched me so much. That would spoil the story for you and I will not do that to you. Experience it for yourself, then you will know what I'm talking about. But, please, don't begin reading the series with this book because that would absolutely spoil all the other books for you. This crisis has been building up throughout five previous novels and jumping into the series in this spot would be a shame. Instead, start at the beginning, with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery (Flavia de Luce Mysteries). Here in book six Flavia is still the same impetuous, headstrong, independent young girl who uses chemistry and intellect to investigate mysteries around her home and English village in the idyllic seeming early years following World War II.
In this book, Alan Bradley has written the conclusion of a chapter in the life of Flavia de Luce, the preteen genius whose nosing-around in various homicides in the 1950's English village of Bishops Lacey has been the meat of the previous five books in the de Luce series. Always simmering on the back burner in the previous books has been the drama of the de Luce family's decaying fortunes after the disappearance of Flavia's mother during a mysterious expedition in Tibet. In this book, Bradley brings the family matter to the foreground and neglects the "English countryside mystery" angle almost entirely.
The book plays to several of Bradley's strengths. His wonderful writing style is in full flower, more what one thinks of as literature than as genre fare (though that distinction is, of course, artificial), and he perfectly captures the emotional tone of the terribly reserved, terribly British de Luce family as they are shattered with sorrow but too proper to reach out to one another. This is in many ways a sad book, and Bradley's depiction of the sadness of the de Luce family is both particular to them and powerfully universal.
The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches works as a study in mood and tone. But I'm not so sure it works as a novel. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who hasn't read the other de Luce books -- it wraps up a lot of threads from those books but it would be nearly incomprehensible standing on its own. Nor does it work as a mystery, not that Bradley was really trying. So this book is only for de Luce completists.
But even as a de Luce completist, I was somewhat dissatisfied.
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