“As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust” by Alan Bradley

 

448 pages, Bantam, ISBN-13: 978-0345539946

In As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley, 12-year-old Flavia de Luce laments her banishment (her word) to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy, the boarding school that her mother, Harriet, once attended across the sea in deepest, darkest Canada (and author Bradley’s homeland). Flavia’s first day in captivity begins as one might expect…when a charred and mummified body tumbles out of her bedroom chimney, giving our favorite budding chemist and preteen detective a chance to once-more prove her skills to the world.

While attending classes, making friends – and enemies – her own age (a first for Flavia), and assessing the school’s stern headmistress and faculty (one of whom is an acquitted poisoner, much to Flavia’s delight), Flavia is on the hunt for the victim’s identity, suspects, means and motives, just like a proper detective. Furthermore, she must confront the rumors that Miss Bodycote’s is haunted and that several girls have disappeared without a trace. So then…nothing new for Flavia de Luce, and just what one would expect in her world.

In many ways, this book is a return to form for Flavia, seeing as she is in a new environment and must prove herself all over again. She is still an unlikely mix of brilliance and precocious self-confidence, and all of her adventures to date have been entertaining, well-constructed and (somehow) plausible. This particular volume rather put me in mind of I Am Half-Sick of Shadows and The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches for, like those previous books, the murder investigation takes second place to other, more pressing (for Flavia) concerns; namely, SCHOOL.

It quickly becomes evident why Bradley chose to keep Flavia out of these prisons, for the constrictions placed upon our heroine makes crime-solving so much more difficult. While there is a great deal to distract Flavia from the mundane everyday existence of the average schoolgirl – impressing the headmistress and her chemistry teacher, influencing a Ouija board reading, sticking up for a bullied girl, and so on – she must still navigate the Ins-and-Outs of the boarding school, and so the crime takes a backseat most of the time to these other concerns.

But this is a school like no other, for eventually Flavia learns that the headmistresses has ulterior motives for keeping her around that relate to her newfound position in life as a Secret Agent in the making. I was rather unsure about this unforeseen change in fortunes for Flavia, but at heart it doesn’t feel wrong or off-the-wall. Just peculiar. Depending on how far these books go – can you imagine a young Flavia de Luce in Swinging London, riding a Vespa and solving murders in short skirts and go-go boots? – we could very well see a Flavia the Spy series in the future.

Flavia is as intelligent and curious as she ever was. She jumps to conclusions (which aren’t always right) but also, above all, reveres the scientific process. And Bradley, as always, is excellent at describing Flavia’s leaping and whirling mind – “Feigning stupidity was one of my specialties. If stupidity were theoretical physics, then I would be Albert Einstein”. Classic. While the mystery takes time to develop and evolve, there is still plenty of Flavia to go around as she maneuvers through this new chapter in her life.

For all that…Flavia belongs at Buckshaw, as I really missed Dogger, Mrs. Mullet, Inspector Hewitt and Gladys (hell, I’d even like to see Ophelia, Daphne and Colonel de Luce). While I understand that Bradley felt the need to mix things up, I hope that As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust is but an interlude and that Flavia returns to her old stomping grounds of Bishop’s Lacey – or, seeing as how her mother was much more than she seemed (to say nothing of Aunt Felicity), maybe Flavia will follow in Harriet’s footsteps and fly away to parts unknown.

I was pleasantly surprised to find at the end of As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust the one-and-only (thus far) Flavia de Luce short story, The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse. Flavia has been called to investigate a murder in a local boy’s school by one of the boys in which the victim has been electroplated in copper in an empty bathtub; her “client” had had a huge row with the man a short time earlier and he is afraid he’s going to be charged for the murder and wants Flavia to clear his name before the police are called. Will she solve the mystery before the body is discovered by the authorities? Hey, this is Flavia de Luce we are talking ‘bout. I won’t spoil the mystery, suffice it to say that it is a Flavia story and all the hallmarks of what make Flavia’s adventures so engaging are here. Do they work as effectively in a short story? Well…Yes and no. Of necessity the story wraps up quickly but, then again, Bradley gives us a mystery which fits well with a quick solution. But it is also fitting with who Flavia is that she would be present if a dead body turned up in her village in odd circumstances. My complaint is with the motive behind copper-plating the corpse as I just didn’t see why they did what they did; perhaps I missed it, but the reasoning behind electroplating a person escaped me. But for that it was an overall pleasant little diversion.