Alan Bradley -- Flavia de Luce

Alan Bradley:  FLAVIA DE LUCE

PERSONAL INFORMATION:

Born October 10, 1938, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; married; wife's name Shirley. Memberships: Saskatoon Writers (first president), Saskatchewan Writers Guild (founding member), Casebook of Saskatoon (founding member). Addresses: Home: Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. E-mail: info@flaviadeluce.com.

CAREER:

Worked at various radio and television stations in Ontario, Canada, and at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University), Toronto, Ontario; University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, director of television engineering in media center, and teacher of scriptwriting and television production courses, c. 1969-94; writer.

AWARDS:

Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award for Children's Literature for short story "Meet Miss Mullen"; Debut Dagger Award, British Crimewriter's Association, for The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

WRITINGS:

(With William A.S. Sarjeant) Ms. Holmes of Baker Street: The Truth about Sherlock (literary criticism), 2nd edition, University of Alberta Press (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), 2004.

The Shoebox Bible (memoir), McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2006.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (mystery), Delacorte Press (New York, NY), 2009.

Author of short stories for literary journals and for CBC Radio. Contributor to periodicals, including the Toronto Globe and Mail and National Post.

SIDELIGHTS

In 2009, Bradley published the first in a series of books featuring an eleven-year-old detective, Flavia de Luce. Bradley recalled in an interview published on the Web site Material Witness that he was working on a completely different book, concerning a female broadcaster during the 1950s, when Flavia made her first appearance. "Like Athena, who sprang fully formed and fully armed from the brow of Zeus, Flavia simply appeared," he said. "She walked onto the page of another book I was writing, and simply hijacked the story. I had no idea who she was or where she came from, and because of that, I resisted her. It took Flavia a while to make me shut up and listen." Although he was already a few chapters into his original book project, Bradley eventually discarded it in order to focus on a new story involving Flavia, which was eventually published as The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is set in England, a country the author had never visited until after the book's publication. His evocation of England was based on books he read, and on his grandparents' memories of their life there. In the story, Flavia de Luce is eleven years old and brilliant. She has two older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, and a father who seems more concerned with stamp-collecting than he is with his daughters. Left to their own purposes, the girls all learn to pursue their passions, which in Flavia's case means the study of chemistry, and in particular, the study of poisons. The mystery begins to unfold when a dead bird is left on the doorstep of the family home, with a rare stamp impaled on its beak. After a murder is committed, Flavia begins her own investigation of the matter, riding her bicycle into town to talk with villagers and visit the library, to do research on her theories about the crime. Eventually, she learns that the murder may be connected to her father and his involvement in the suicide, years before, of one of his teachers. According to Kirstin Merrihew, a contributor to the Mostly Fiction Web site, the story is "a positively delightful romp," full of well-developed characters. Flavia herself, while presented as a very precocious child, is also shown to be "unschooled about many aspects of human nature," something that "endears Flavia all the more as a character."

Flavia was described by Julia Holmes in a review for Entertainment Weekly as "scheming, fearless, and brilliant." Holmes also praised the author for creating a story that is clever and entertaining, yet also portrays "the darker realities of this rustic English paradise," still struggling to recover from the traumas of World War II. Reviewer Judy Coon commented in Booklist that the only people who might dislike The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie are those who do not like "precocious young heroines with extraordinary vocabulary and audacious courage."

REVIEWS

Title: Mourning Paper

Source: The New York Times Book Review. (May 24, 2009): Book Review Desk: p22(L). From Literature Resource Center.    Document Type: Book review

Nancy Drew drives her own blue roadster. Harriet the Spy travels in a chauffeured limousine. Emma Graham, Martha Grimes's 12-year-old sleuth, takes taxis and trains. Flavia de Luce, the 11-year-old heroine of Alan Bradley's first mystery, THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE (Delacorte, $23), goes her way on a beat-up bicycle she calls Gladys, more independent and demonstrably naughtier than her literary sister-sleuths.

The neglected youngest daughter of a widower who never looks up from his precious stamp collection, Flavia takes refuge from her loneliness in the magnificent Victorian chemistry laboratory an ancestor installed at the family's estate in the English countryside. With ''An Elementary Study of Chemistry'' as her bible, the precocious child has become an expert in poisons -- a nasty skill that gets her in trouble when she melts down a sister's pearls, but serves her well when a stranger turns up dead in the cucumber patch and her father is arrested for murder. Impressive as a sleuth and enchanting as a mad scientist (''What a jolly poison could be extracted from the jonquil''), Flavia is most endearing as a little girl who has learned how to amuse herself in a big lonely house

THE WEED THAT STRINGS THE HANGMAN’S BAG

Flavia, the precocious, imaginative, and adorable 11-year-old sleuth, returns for her second adventure. It's a mystery in itself how a mature male author can pen the adventures of such a young female child and keep readers believing in the fantasy. Flavia's world is 1950s England--specifically, a very old country house that just happens to have a long-abandoned chemistry laboratory. And Flavia just happens to be fascinated by chemistry--particularly poisons. This helps her solve mysteries because, as Flavia says, "There's something about pottering with poisons that clarifies the mind." This time she becomes involved with the members of a traveling puppet show that features the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. When the puppet-master is mysteriously electrocuted during the show, Flavia knows it can't be an accident and eventually finds the murderer. The rest of Flavia's family are also eccentric, to say the least, and add greatly to the overall fun. Thank goodness Bradley is not allowing Flavia to grow up too quickly; we need more sleuths whose primary mode of transportation is a bicycle.--Judy Coon

COMING IN FEBRUARY 2011... THE THIRD FLAVIA MYSTERY

RED HERRING WITHOUT MUSTARD

Having won an Agatha and a Dilys Winn Award, made numerous best sellers lists, reached the New York Times's extended list, won copious best book accolades, and hit 31 territories worldwide with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, little Ms. Flavia de Luce should be proud. In her third outing, she demonstrates a firm knowledge of poisons while saving a gypsy from accusations of child abduction. Fun for book groups; there's even a related tea-party kit -available. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc.

I am Half Sick of Shadows  --  Book 4 -- 2011
After the whole village of Bishop's Lacey descends on Flavia de Luce's family's estate during a raging blizzard to watch the filming of a movie, a person ends up dead, strangled by a length of film, and the eleven-year-old budding chemist must find the killer.

Speaking from among the Bones -- Book 5 -- 2013
When the tomb of St. Tancred is opened at a village church in Bishop's Lacey, its shocking contents lead to another case for Flavia de Luce, in which greed, pride and murder result in old secrets coming to light, along with a forgotten flower that hasn't been seen for half a thousand years.

Are you a fan of Flavia?  She has a fan club... check it out!

Fan Club:  http://flaviafanclub.ning.com/