As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley was published in 2015, it’s the seventh book in the Flavia de Luce series which I have really been enjoying catching up with over the past couple of years.

Having said that – I didn’t love this one as much as the others, mainly because the setting is Canada where Flavia has been sent to attend her mother’s old boarding school. It’s a weird place with strange rules, run more along convent lines really as the rules don’t encourage friendships and worst of all there’s no privacy in the place with people just walking into other people’s rooms without so much as a by your leave.

It’s not long before Flavia finds herself on familiar ground though as a partially mummified body comes thudding down her bedroom chimney, also three of the girls have gone missing over the last few years. Obviously there’s investigative work for Flavia to get stuck into.

This one missed out on all the family banter and ructions because of the setting, which adds quite a bit of background atmosphere to the books usually. Away from Flavia’s home life, her sisters, father and of course her best friend and mentor Dogger, Flavia realised that she even missed her ghastly sisters, and so did I. The teachers and pupils of Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy didn’t make up for their absence. It was still a good read though.