I remember the months dragging on while I waited for another adventure with Fr. Tim from Jan Karon’s Mitford series, or, drumming my fingers with the rest of the world for another Harry Potter caper. My love for little Flavia De luce is just as abiding and it can be maddening knowing the last volume of the series, Chimney Sweepers Come To Dust, was published only nine months ago, so the next Flavia romp is still months away.
But O Happy Day! Bradley apparently released a short story just before the publication of Chimney Sweepers, a short story titled “The Curious Case Of the Copper Corpse”. How did I miss this one?! Once again, Amazon’s magical “We recommend” flashed it on my Daily Deals and lured me to send it to my Kindle–and quick as you can say “copper corpse”, I was off to Bishop’s Lacey riding alongside Flavia and her faithful Gladys.
In this story, Flavia is twelve and back at Buckshaw. A letter slipped under her door asks for her immediate help with a (you guessed it!) corpse, murdered and covered, inexplicably, in a thin film of copper. At Greyminster, the boys’ school just down the way. The student who sent the note (one Haxton or Plaxton–the scrawl was difficult to decipher) is frantic, as anyone would be if they found a dead body in the bathtub down the hall. Flavia sniffs around, questions a few boys, sits demurly under a tree posing as a visiting sister, and–no surprise here!– solves the mystery 1-2-3.
Available only as an e-book, Curious Case is short. And fairly predictable. But in some ways that just why we read series, right? So if you just want to check in on Flavia to see how she’s doing, send it to your Kindle today.
This is my symphony 