The Dead in Their Faulted Arches: A Flavia de Luce Novel

Flavia de Luce Novels

Writer: Alan Bradley

Paperback edition, 315 pages

Published by Bantam Books, 2014

It was the summer of 1950. From the very start, Flavia de Luce was not just an ordinary 11 years old girl. She lives in Buckshaw, a 300 years old once-grand Gregorian mansion built by the de Luces family, in an English bucolic village of Bishop’s Lacey. Her mother, Harriet, had been lost in a mountaineering accident in Tibet when Flavia was just one year old. Together with her older sisters, she was sort of home-schooled by her father.

Apart from the conventional education his father gives her, she has grown fond of chemistry. And maybe it’s not a coincidence. She inherited her great-uncle marvellous laboratory on the top floor of the mansion. Her daily life consists of running away from her sisters who couldn’t stop teasing her and hiding in the laboratory, working on chemical experiments creating poisons.

But things changed when she witnessed a man dying in their garden. Her curiosity brought her deeper into the investigation. This amateur sleuth uses her wit and her innocent appearance to fish for information. Her vast knowledge especially in chemistry helps her to put two and two together. Since then she has assisted Inspector Hewitt solving murders in the village.

It is now the spring of 1951. This is the sixth Flavia de Luce adventure.

In an interview, Alan Bradley said that that his plan was to make six books, before he extended it into ten. However, being the original last book, Bradley put different kind of story in this sixth novel. He wrote different kind of murders, different kind of bad guys and different kind of chemical experiments. There is more drama than the previous novels. All of those are closer to home and more personal to Flavia.

I love Bradley’s narration. He’s able to make a strong characterization. Every single person in Flavia de Luce novels is distinctive. He shows that even though Flavia is annoying, she’s a genius and just simply adorable. Although sometimes, I feel that Flavia is too genius and mature for her age.

Flavia novels are like oasis in the current world of fiction. This book is very reader-friendly. The language is very soft and there’s no inappropriate scene. Maybe that’s why although the intended audience is adult, Bradley found out that his readers are ranged from 8 years old to 95 years old.

Bradley’s description of events is a mixture of beautiful, comical and heartfelt. Until now I can still picture Flavia wearing a skirt, flying in her mother’s bike. Or when the whole family tries to avoid eating Mrs. Mullet’s dreadful cooking. Or when Dogger, their butler, suffers from nervous breakdown. He can also describe the stiff yet heartwarming relationship, the “I love you/I love you not” feeling between the characters, probably typical Englishmen in the era.

Reading this book after the five previous novels, I am convinced that Bradley’s writing is incredible. It seems like he wrote all his six novels in one go because Bradley seems to explain all confusions he created and every character showed up in the previous books. He gives closure to his readers. After reading this book, I feel that all figures, events and conversations in the prior books matters and make me want to re-read the previous books.

The problem is, if someone read this book before any other Flavia’s novel he/she will not be able to feel the intended nuances and surprises of this book. It’s a fantastic novel, though. I am sure reading this book will make readers want to read more about Flavia.

In his next Flavia novel, Bradley promised a new adventure, far from Buckshaw and her family. I can’t wait to read it. I do hope, this time Bradley will change his mind again and extend Flavia’s story to more than just ten books.