We first met the incomparable Flavia de Luce in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag is her second outing and just as fun and engrossing. These mysteries are tightly plotted and intriguing all on their own, but the real star of the show here is Flavia: intrepid, daring, charming, and sharp, she tears through the story (on Gladys, her well-loved and faithful bicycle steed) with an aplomb and mesmerizing energy that belies her tender years and entwines herself firmly around the heart of anyone who meets her.

We begin this adventure in the local church’s graveyard, where Flavia is indulging her imagination with wild dreams of the grief that would be present at her own funeral, when she hears that most mysterious sound: a lone woman weeping.  Flavia’s curiosity (and innate compassion) soon propel her into a mystery that reveals secrets carefully buried years before and sets her little village on end. Why would Rupert Porson, star of the BBC, puppeteer, and creator of the renowned Snoddy the Squirrel and friends, find himself in her tiny village? What did Mad Meg see in Gibbet Wood? Even childhood pursuits are not immune to a darker air in this mystery, and Flavia’s inventive and innovative mind will be put to the test in her search for the answers she needs.

The mystery itself is engrossing, but the heart of the book is Flavia. Intrepid, intelligent, compassionate, and charming, she inhabits each page with a vibrancy that makes following each twist and turn an exhilarating ride with the cleverest of chauffeurs. Flavia’s loyalty to and love of her family are a warm thread in her character, and her observations on life and morality belie her age. This is especially true in her dealings with the faithful family retainer, Dogger, a man who returned from war wounded in body and soul, and sometimes needs Flavia’s help in coming back to the life he currently lives:

This was sheer fantasy–I hadn’t touched the thing–but I have learned that under certain circumstances, a fib is not only permissible, but can even be an act of perfect grace.

Bradley evokes the austerity and strain of the post-WWII era with delicacy and tact, never doing more than allowing the characters to inhabit the time completely. There is a sense of a golden age, or at least a golden time, where someone like Flavia can flee to a corner room in a rambling house and surround herself with the apparatus of investigation. Though she certainly inhabits a village worthy of Miss Marple, this is a young lady who could give Sherlock Holmes a run for his money in chemical experiments, a main character conjured up by often glittering prose with an awareness of both the humanity, and the humour, found in life. It is impossible not to be utterly charmed by Flavia and those that surround her, and there is a sense of glee in our precocious investigator’s method, and a helpless sort of captivity to the wonderful wanderings she takes us on:

There’s something about pottering with poisons that clarifies the mind. When the slightest slip of the hand could prove fatal, one’s attention is forced to focus like a burning-glass upon the experiment, and it is then that the answers to half-formed questions so often come swarming to mind as readily as bees coming home to the hive.

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