Set in 1950s Bishop's Lacy, England, at the church fete, eleven-year-old Flavia de Lucie decides to get her fortune told. But when things go wrong she accidentally sets fire to the tent when the gypsy gives her a fortune about her dead mother and runs off. She comes forward to Dr. Darby to confess what she has done and offer to pay, but the gypsy woman, Fennella, says it was an accident and there are no charges. However, Fennella does not have a place to stay so Flavia offers up the Palings, an area of land on her dead mother's estate for Fennella and her horse and caravan to stay.
On the way there, Mrs. Bull, who is camped out there, freaks out and accuses Fennella of stealing her baby that went missing several years ago. Flavia gets her out of that situation and settled for the night. The next morning when she goes to check on her she finds her barely alive having been bludgeoned nearly to death. She sets out for the doctor's and brings him back and Fenella's life is saved, though she is in a coma.
Her granddaughter, Porcelain comes down to look after her grandmother. Flavia hides her in her section of the house, which she uses sometimes when she isn't accusing Flavia of attacking her grandmother because Flavia's father kicked her grandparents off of the property years ago which caused the death of her grandfather.
But there are others up and about that night acting mysteriously. Brookie Harewood. is paid money by his mother to stay away. But that doesn't seem to be enough money because he was seen by Flavia inside her home returning two fancy fireplace pokers. Then not long after that Porcelain and Flavia find him hanging from the Poseidon's trident with a lobster fork shoved up his nose. She calls in Inspector Hewett but doesn't tell him about Brookie's break-in at Buckshaw, her home.
Flavia plays inside her laboratory concocting chemical compounds that help her solve the mystery. She will need the help from her odioius older sisters Feely and Daffy who abuse her awfully, but upon whom she will seek her revenge. Did the same person attack Fennella and kill Brookie or were they separate crimes? Why are there more than one set of fireplace pokers? Will Flavia figure out who the killer or possibly killers are in time? Flavia is a delightful child who is clever, yet longs for a friend. She hopes Porcelain will be that friend but is sometimes disappointed. She is such a unique child that there is no one like her to be friends with her. She constantly feels as though she is pitting her wits against Inspector Hewett and seeks his approval. This is a fabulous book and I give it a four and a half stars out of five.
Quotes
There are times that I see, but do not observe.
-Alan Bradley (A Red Herring Without Mustard p 10)
“Love’s not some big river that flows on and on forever, and if you believe it is, you’re a bloody fool. It can be dammed up until nothing’s left but a trickle…” “Or stopped completely,” I added.
-Alan Bradley (A Red Herring Without Mustard p 155)
Chemistry has more gods than Mount Olympus and here in my solitude I could pray to the greatest of them: Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (Who, when he found a young assistant in a linen draper’s shop surreptitiously reading a chemistry text which she kept hidden under the counter, promptly dumped his fiancée and married the girl); William Perkin (Who had found a way of making purple dye for the robes of emperors without using the spit of mollusks); and Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who probably discovered oxygen, and---more thrilling than even that—hydrogen cyanide, my personal pick as the last word in poisons.
-Alan Bradley (A Red Herring Without Mustard p 185)
I had always marveled at the way in which three clear liquids—nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, and water—when combined could produce, as if by magic, color—and not just any color, but the color of a flaming sunset.
-Alan Bradley (A Red Herring Without Mustard p 244)
Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Red-Herring-Without-Mustard-Flavia-ebook/dp/B004C43FTS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543245766&sr=8-1&keywords=a+red+herring+without+mustard
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