Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd by Alan Bradley

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 . . .

Gloomy homecoming
illness in the family
a corpse will cheer her.

I so enjoyed this book. It only took me 3 days even while working and getting 8 hours of sleep at night.

The main character Flavia de Luce has come back home from school in Canada. It is set in around the time after WWII. It is hard to imagine Flavia being only 12 years old the way she speaks she sounds much older. But she is a precocious young lady seeming to have a habit of finding dead bodies and then going about trying to solve the mystery. Once I got past the bizarre and off putting way she speaks I did enjoy the mystery unfolding. She travels all over the place alone and in very bad weather in which no one seems to think odd or to care. Her family is very distant to her and her father is in the hospital. Her mother has passed away. The only one who seems to care about her is Dogger her family's butler and some neighbors and acquaintances.

Coming in to the story at book 8 was probably not the best beginning because I am sure stuff got explained along the way. But eventually I got the hang of the story and started to enjoy it.

I received this book free from the publisher for an honest review.