The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley has appeared in a few of my favourite blogs and has always been adored by the readers (my pals!) so I was fairly sure that I was in no danger of finding this book to be a dud – and of course it wasn’t. In fact I’m already reading the second in the series and have the third one from the library.

Set in England in 1950, Flavia de Luce is the youngest in a family of three daughters, their mother Harriet died in a climbing accident and Flavia has no memories of her. Their father is a remote, withdrawn character, as were most fathers at that time. The girls are very much left to get on with things on their own which is something that their father might not have done if he had had an inkling of just how nasty elder sisters can be to their much younger siblings. I know because I’m a third daughter myself!

Never fear though, Flavia gets her own back, she’s a great character and with her love of chemistry it’s a brave or stupid person who crosses her. I never particularly wanted a daughter (it’s all that pink girly stuff which put me off that idea) but if I had had one I would have wanted her to be like Flavia.

When Flavia discovers a dying man in the garden she becomes involved in a mystery which had its origins years before she was born. She always seems to be a few steps ahead of the police and with the help of her trusty bike Gladys and an old family retainer called Dogger she solves everything.

There’s quite a lot of chemistry in the book and if I’m reading about something which I don’t know much about myself I’m always wondering how correct the information is. So each time a chemical was mentioned I asked my trusty resident Chemistry Ph.D guy (Jack) and I’m glad to say that it was all correct.

I enjoyed being in the company of Flavia so much that I began to read the second one in the series straight after finishing this one. Hurrah for libraries!