In Alan Bradley's The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Flavia lives with her father and sisters at their ancestral manor house, but they are now impoverished. Oh, and Flavia is oddly intrigued by poisons. One day she finds a dead bird with a postage stamp pierced by hits beak on their doorstep, and that night she finds a man, Bonepenny, dying in their garden whose final word is "Vale."
Along with missing her mother who disappeared in a climbing accident when Flavia was still a baby, Flavia struggles to grasp what is happening as her grief-stricken father, the Colonel, provides no parenting and her teenage sisters are lost in their own worlds. When the Colonel is arrested for murder, Flavia hunts down clues that lead her all the way back to her father's schooldays where he was classmates with the dead man and places herself in jeopardy repeatedly. While still at school, Bonepenny stole a priceless stamp from the headmaster, and now a similar stamp has been stolen from the King. With the oversight of Inspector Hewitt, Flavia solves the crime.
This was a reread for me as I now want to continue the series and it was several years ago when I read this for the first time. I'm happy to report that it's my first 5-star read of 2025.
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