As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley

and up out of the sea, climbing sickeningly toward the sky, then crashing down with a horrendous hollow booming, throwing out great white wings of water to port and starboard. Out here on the wild Atlantic, the Scythia’s bow was hauling itself up . Only the faithful family retainers, Dogger and Mrs. Mullet, would have shed a furtive tear at my departure, but even so, they, too, in time, would have only foggy memories of Flavia. Somewhere, a thousand miles behind us over the eastern horizon, lay the village of Bishop’s Lacey and Buckshaw, my former home, where my father, Colonel Haviland de Luce, and my sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, were most likely, at this very moment, getting on nicely with their lives as if I had never existed. Scythia, my jaws wide open to the gale, hoping that the salt spray would wash the bad taste out of my mouth: the taste that was my life so far.

I was standing at the heaving prow of the R.M.S. I shouted the word into the tearing wind, and the wind spat it back into my face. The very sound of it-like echoing iron gates crashing closed behind you like steel bolts being shot shut-makes your hair stand on end, doesn’t it? There is no sadder word in the English language.

“Banished!” the savage waves roared as they drenched me with freezing water. And ultimately she must discover what it means to be her mother s daughter.“Banished!” the wild wind shrieked as it tore at my face. Girls have been disappearing from Miss Bodycote s with alarming regularity, leading Flavia to wonder not only how and why, but what exactly is the academy s true purpose, and why were they so keen that she enrol? If Flavia is to avoid the same fate as the missing girls, she must enter a shadowy world where truth and lies seem interchangeable and no one can be trusted. But Flavia is soon on familiar ground, when, on her first night, a mummified body is dislodged from a chimney, and she is presented with a gruesome puzzle to solve.Īnd the mystery of the withered corpse is only the beginning.

With its forbidding headmistress and bizarre rules, adapting to Miss Bodycote s is quite a challenge. It all began with that awful business about my mother, Harriet.įollowing the dramatic events at the conclusion of THE DEAD IN THEIR VAULTED ARCHES and the shocking revelations about her mother, Flavia de Luce finds herself expelled from the familiar confines of Bishop s Lacey and her beloved family home, Buckshaw, and packed off, as she puts it, to Miss Bodycote s Female Academy in Canada. The seventh novel in Alan Bradley s addictive Flavia de Luce mystery series. Category: Fiction Crime Fiction/Mystery/Thriller Crime Fiction/Mystery/Thriller-Cmt

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley