What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust
A Flavia de Luce Mystery (11)
Published on 3. September 2024
368 pages
978-0-385-69821-4 (ISBN)
Description
***SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MARTIN FREEMAN, JONATHAN PRYCE, AND TOBY JONES***
AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Amateur sleuth Flavia de Luce, along with her pestilent younger cousin, investigates the murder of a former public hangman and uncovers secrets that bring the greatest shock of her life.
Flavia de Luce has taken on the mentorship of her pestilent younger cousin Undine, whose main talent seems to be raising Flavia's hackles, although in her best moments she shows potential for trespassing, trickery, and other assorted mayhem.
When local recluse and former hangman Major Greyleigh is found dead after a breakfast of poisonous mushrooms, suspicion falls on the de Luce family's longtime cook, Mrs. Mullet. After all, wasn't it she who'd picked the mushrooms, cooked the omelet, and served it to Greyleigh moments before his death?
But Flavia knows the beloved Mrs. Mullet is innocent. Together with Dogger, estate gardener and partner-in-crime, and the obnoxious Undine, Flavia sets out to find the real killer and clear Mrs. Mullet's good name. Little does she know that following the case's twists and turns will lead her to a most surprising discovery-one with the power to upend her entire life.
AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Amateur sleuth Flavia de Luce, along with her pestilent younger cousin, investigates the murder of a former public hangman and uncovers secrets that bring the greatest shock of her life.
Flavia de Luce has taken on the mentorship of her pestilent younger cousin Undine, whose main talent seems to be raising Flavia's hackles, although in her best moments she shows potential for trespassing, trickery, and other assorted mayhem.
When local recluse and former hangman Major Greyleigh is found dead after a breakfast of poisonous mushrooms, suspicion falls on the de Luce family's longtime cook, Mrs. Mullet. After all, wasn't it she who'd picked the mushrooms, cooked the omelet, and served it to Greyleigh moments before his death?
But Flavia knows the beloved Mrs. Mullet is innocent. Together with Dogger, estate gardener and partner-in-crime, and the obnoxious Undine, Flavia sets out to find the real killer and clear Mrs. Mullet's good name. Little does she know that following the case's twists and turns will lead her to a most surprising discovery-one with the power to upend her entire life.
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Person
ALAN BRADLEY is the internationally bestselling author of eleven Flavia de Luce mystery novels and the memoir The Shoebox Bible. His first Flavia novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, received the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award, the Dilys Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Agatha Award, the Macavity Award, and the Barry Award, and was nominated for the Anthony Award. His other Flavia de Luce works include The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, A Red Herring Without Mustard, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Speaking from Among the Bones, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd, The Grave's a Fine and Private Place, The Golden Tresses of the Dead, and What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust, as well as the ebook short story "The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse." Numb Were the Beadsman's Fingers, the twelfth novel in the Flavia de Luce series, will be published in Fall 2026. Originally from Toronto, Bradley lives and writes on an island in the middle of the Irish Sea.
