Flavia is a precocious preteen child who loves chemistry, who is in a perpetual war with her two teenage sisters, who lives in an ancient mansion in Britain and who discovers a dying man laying in the cucumber patch in the family garden, the same man whom she overheard arguing with her father the night before. Naturally, she takes it upon herself to figure out what really happened to the mysterious stranger, an investigation that will that take her clear back to the schoolboy days of her aloof and austere and only parent, her father.
This was a fairly good mystery story, set in the early (?) 1950s. I guess my main problem with it was I don't really enjoy stories about genius-level children. They just don't seem realistic. Are there people like that? I suppose so, but I have no experience of them.
In stories, precocious children often come off as brats and Flavia certainly seems to fit that description. The cop uses the letter P as code for Flavia in his notes but refuses tell her what the P stands for. I am guessing Pest or possibly Pill or perhaps Pain-in-the-ass.
Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.
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