The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag (Flavia de Luce #2)


The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag (Flavia de Luce #2) by Alan Bradley

Blurb:

In 1950s English bucolic Bishop's Lacy, narrator Flavia de Luce, 11, has a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders. Pupeteer Rupert Porson has his strings sizzled, his charming helper Nialla suspect. Astride trusty bicycle Gladys, she investigates Gibbet Wood madwoman, icar, German pilot, and poisoned chocolates.

Review:

Of the many phrases that came to mind to describe Cynthia Richardson, "good sport" was not among them; "ogress," however, was.

To a certain degree I got what I wanted from this book: A cheeky, murder solving eleven-year-old being arrogant. Sadly, this is about everything this book managed and it might have overdone it to a point where it was more annoying than endearing. That doesn't mean that this book was terrible but it also wasn't my cup of tea. Personally, I couldn't hold interest in it at all, even though it felt like a quick and easy read.

Its fatal flaw was the long-windedness of the beginning; it takes the book about 150 pages until a corpse appears and the actual plot begins which is almost halfway through the book. Moreover, the action, once it takes off, is far less appealing than in the last book. Frankly, there simply isn't any weight to the plot. In the last book, Flavia was directly involved in the case and her actions had consequences but in this one she simply solves the case to prove a point. If you can't establish an interesting motivation for an 11-year-old detective your book is pretty much bound to fall flat.

Further, because I thought the book was this boring, I couldn't get interested in hardly anything and, even worse, some minor things really started to bother me. Like Flavia's siblings teasing her about not being wanted. In the first book this felt like an interesting way to develop their dynamic; in this book it felt like a cheap ploy to add a little more drama but without any actual consequences. I mean, they (the sisters) tell her (Flavia) that she is to be "brought back into the orphanage she came from" and Flavia is super upset, storms out, forgets about it after 5 seconds and everything is fine again. What? Why? How? Did that have to be in there?

That being said, I truly didn't dislike it as much as it might sound. Sure, it couldn't hold my interest and, sure, some things did annoy me, however, although the overall disinterestedness prevailed throughout most of the book I was swayed by the story in the end. Actually, the ending was the best part of this book and just when I thought "okay, now I do want more" it ended. 

Rating:

A hopeful 2.5 stars in anticipation for the third instalment of this series (however long it might be until I actually read that).

Details:

Name: The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
Deutscher Titel: Mord ist kein Kinderspiel
Series: Flavia de Luce
Author: Alan Bradley
Previous Books in this Series: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (#1)
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Pages: 364

Comments

Post a Comment

Beliebte Posts.

All the Light We Cannot See

Image
All the Light We Cannot See  by Anthony Doerr Blurb: Marie-Laure  has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a perfect miniature of their Paris neighbourhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. But when the Nazis invade, father and daughter flee with a dangerous secret. Werner is a German orphan, destined to labour in the same mine that claimed his father’s life, until he discovers a knack for engineering. His talent wins him a place at a brutal military academy, but his way out of obscurity is built on suffering. At the same time, far away in a walled city by the sea, an old man discovers new worlds without ever setting foot outside his home. But all around him, impending danger closes in. Review: What  is blindness? Where there should be a wall, her hands find nothing. Where there should be nothing, a table leg gouges her shin. Cars growl in the streets; leaves whisper in the sky; blood rustles through her inner ears. In the sta
Keep reading

An August Throwback

Image
Another  month passes, summer is coming to an end, September (finally!) hits us with some much needed rain and a direly wished for drop in temperature (or maybe that's just me). Soon, my semester is going to start so I tried to cram a lot of books into one month, which kinda worked well? So , in total I read 21.25 books, which includes 5 graphic novels/mangas, and listened to 3-and-something audiobooks. I don't know how many hours/minutes of audiobooks that makes a day but I do know that I read a total of 6478 pages or about 209 pages a day, which I'm very happy with. But let's wind back a bit and actually look at what it is that I've read in the month of August: Maus  by Art Spiegelman (4 Stars) A pretty fantastic Comic (or Graphic Novel? I guess because I read the bind-up it is a Graphic Novel but I believe it was published as Comics? I'm really not good at differentiating the two) about WWII. Touching and brutal, as most WW-stories tend to be
Keep reading

Goldene Zeiten

Image
Goldene Zeiten  von Daniel G. Spieker Zusammenfassung: Ein Mann kommt zum Arzt und leidet anscheinend an einer unbekannten Krankheit: Sein Körper wird langsam zu Gold. Rezension: Hat  sie tatsächlich Angst, dass ich ihr fremdgehe oder sucht sie nur nach einem Grund, um die Beziehung zu beenden. Mal schauen, wer zuerst einen findet. Zunächst  sollte ich wohl mit meiner Standard-Anmerkung beginnen: Ich habe nicht nur ein Rezensionsexemplar von diesem Buch vom Autor bekommen, besagter Autor ist auch ein Freund von mir. Ich werde trotzdem so ehrlich wie möglich sein. Gut , da das also erledigt wäre habe ich zwei Dinge zu sagen: 1. Goldene Zeiten  hat mir um einiges besser gefallen als Ein gutes Leben   2. zwischendurch hat mich die Geschichte ernsthaft genervt. Ich fange direkt mit dem schmerzhaften an, einfach um das hinter mich zu bringen: Die "Wissenschaft". Urgh, jedes Mal, wenn mir Logikfehler auffallen, brennen sie sich mir so richtig böse
Keep reading