Sweetness At The Bottom of The Pie | Murder Mystery! | A Book Report

AN: This book report might be slightly confusing. And warning, there are SPOILERS! These are because I had to get it in in less than oh so many words, and my teacher wants us to include the beginning, middle, and end in our summaries.

SPOILER ALERT!

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Have you ever found a dead jack snipe on your doorstep? Perhaps you have, but one with a Penny Black stamp punctured through its beak? In The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, Flavia de Luce is introduced in her family’s mansion, Buckshaw, where the bird is found. The same morning a dying man is found in the garden, and breathes, “Vale” in her face, meaning farewell. Flavia is a mystery herself as she rides with Gladys, her bike, around town racing against Inspector Hewitt to solve it. Horace Bonepenny was discovered to be the dead man. Flavia realizes after false suspicions and the discovery of a gown and cap at the tower where Mr. Twining the stamp collector died that it was Bony’s accomplice Bob Stanley who killed him, not suicide.

The mood in this story changes rapidly with Flavia’s short attention span. One minute she’ll be in the depths of gloom and another she’ll be flying away on Gladys singing. Her thought process reflects the emotions going on and on, sometimes nothing provoking them. The mood of the mystery is suspenseful at times, and often odd, like when the jack snipe appears. Curiosity is what leads her through the story, mattering not what she encountered; only that she went onward.

Flavia’s sister Daffy being a book worm, Flavia uses similes and metaphors more often than any other character. One of the most commonly used by her is a reference to chemistry, her true passion. She might ponder how events seem to boil and heat up at the touch of something new, an acid added, or stranger coming into town, just the way a chemical would. Flavia would use similes and metaphors to describe human feelings and actions, or to describe a person’s appearance, or room just entered. Lengthy explanations were provided by the ever- going symbolism created by Flavia in the story.

The way Flavia interacts with people, and in particular her sisters, has been interesting and hilarious from the start of the book, where she is getting out of a closet where she had been mugged and locked. Usually a conversation with her sisters Feely and Daffy will start with an accusation of her, and then Flavia will insult their reasoning, until later it is discovered they had been right all along, but Flavia is a horridly good liar. She keeps everyone in suspense in a way that they can’t predict what she’ll do next as to make sure they can’t prevent it, either. Because of the way she is able to spin a tale, she can get away with anything for as long as she likes, one of the main reasons she can produce anything in relevance to the death at Buckshaw.