A tangled tale of chemistry and dark British humour
Chemistry is the greatest passion of eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest daughter of a tragically widowed British aristocrat. For now, he uses it mainly to set traps for his hostile older sisters, but soon he will have the opportunity to apply his knowledge - especially about poisons - to a crime investigation.
One day, the de Luce family find a dead bird with a postage stamp in its beak outside their house, which upsets Flavia's philatelist father. Shortly afterwards, the girl overhears a nighttime argument between her father and a mysterious visitor, and in the early morning she finds a dying man in the garden who whispers "vale" to her just before he dies. Flavia's father is accused of the murder and Flavia begins to investigate on her own to clear the family name. Soon he suspects that the current crime is somehow connected to the horrific death of one of his father's teachers...
A small but intelligent and courageous narrator takes us into the English countryside of the 1950s with insight and often surprisingly incisive irony. Pie with a Drop of Poison successfully follows in the footsteps of the classic works of the British detective school and will undoubtedly be appreciated by every lover of suspenseful stories, regardless of age.
