REVIEW: The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by A. Bradley

Title: The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

Author:  A. Bradley
Genre / Pages:  Fiction, humour / 368
Publication: Doubleday Canada, 2010
Rating:  4th shelf 
Source:  Chapter's Indigo
lj's plot in one pot:  The second from Canadian author Alan Bradley features Flavia (almost 11 year old chemistry whiz) who, less than altruistically volunteers to help with a puppet show, ends up trying to solve yet another murder near Buckshaw.

Wow! It hath been awhile...  I've been scrambling like a crazy person trying to get organized for Back to School (aren't we all?) Although reading hasn't slipped on the priorities, blogging unfortunately has.


Anyhoo, I'm still loving Flavia - but in this installment of Flavia-fantastico, she is slight less precocious, slightly more adult-like.  Perhaps the author is trying to indicate the passage of time and maybe her near death experience in the first book has matured her...but I don't want these things to happen.  Not unlike Peter Pan (and a great many women on the Real Housewives shows), Flavia needs to be ageless.


The writing is still fantastic; a believable murder occurs in the environs and Flavia somehow wriggles her way into the detective work.  This time, there were a few loose ends (w.r.t. characters), for example Nialla.  That being said, I still love the book/author/characters and can't wait for "A Red Herring Without Mustard".

"Mother Goose!

I have never much cared for flippant remarks, especially when others make them, and in particular, I don't give a frog's fundament for them when they come from an adult." p17

and just because she is that funny,

"Seen from the air, the male mind must look rather like the canals of Europe, with ideas being towed along well-worn towpaths by heavy-footed dray horses...But the female mind, even in my limited experience, seems more of a vast and teeming swamp, but a swamp that knows in an instant whenever a stranger - even miles away - has so much as dipped a single toe into her waters." p.295

For more info on Flavia / Alan Bradley, click here.