As our story opens, Flavia, protagonist and narrator, lies dead in the graveyard. Well, perhaps not, but she’s having a fine time imagining it, when she hears someone crying. Upon investigation, she finds a young woman, Nialla, stretched upon a gravestone, weeping.“Call me Mother Goose,” Nialla says. She is traveling with - and living with, and being abused by - Rupert Porson, crippled genius puppeteer, famed throughout England for his television show about Snoddy the Squirrel. Their van has broken down and they have no money for repairs. Enter the vicar, luckily, and Rupert himself. Between them they arrange a performance in the parish hall, so Rupert and Nialla can earn enough for repairs and provide much-needed entertainment to the villagers. One afternoon and one evening show are arranged for Saturday.

The van is unloaded into the parish hall and the stage is set. The vicar gets permission for Rupert and Nialla to camp on Ingleby’s farm. Mysterious and peculiar characters appear: Dieter, a German prisoner who chose to stay in England after the war; Sally, the land girl on Ingleby’s farm; Mad Meg, who lives in a shack in Gibbet Wood; Mutt Willmott, Rupert’s boss at BBC; Gordon Ingleby, the farmer who grows Indian hemp and sells it to the ill and injured to ease their pain; Cynthia, the vicar’s battle-ax wife, who lives only to fight sin; Father’s sister Felicity, who is (surprise!) a trifle eccentric.

Saturday afternoon's brilliant puppet show, the ever-popular Jack and the Beanstalk, is marred by just one thing. The villagers are shocked by the resemblance of the marionette Jack to the Ingleby's little boy, Robin, who was found, five years before, hanging from the rotting, ancient gallows in Gibbet Wood. What could this mean? No one thinks to warn the Inglebys of this sad resemblance before they attend the evening performance. Tension builds; the performance goes forward. Suddenly, Death visits the parish hall. Is this mysterious death an accident or murder? Is it connected in some way with Robin’s death years ago? With the help of her trusty bicycle, named Gladys, and the laboratory she inherited from Great-Uncle Tar, Flavia helps her old friend Inspector Hewitt solve the case.

When other kids hid comic books behind their Spelling is Fun in sixth grade, were you hiding Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? If so, you will adore Flavia. You will understand the precarious tightrope she walks between childhood and adulthood, and that her only safety lies in knowing when to be a child - and when not to. 

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag, with its interwoven sub-plots and complex characters, is the second book featuring Flavia de Luce. The author plans four more. I look forward to reading them. The plain English details of Flavia’s chemical experiments are fascinating.  The characters are well-rounded; no one is all good or all bad. Although Flavia is unusually precocious, she is not impossibly so. Still very much a child in terms of life experience, Flavia uses her extreme intelligence, wit, charm, humor, and adeptness in manipulating adults to make her way through life. You will enjoy taking that journey with her. 

--Nancy McIntyre