The weed that strings the hangman's bag

Summary: Flavia thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop's Lacey are over -- and then Rupert Porson has an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. The beloved puppeteer has had his own strings sizzled, but who'd do such a thing, and why? The questions are intriguing enough to make Flavia put aside her chemistry experiments and schemes of vengeance against her insufferable big sisters. Astride Gladys, her trusty bicycle, Flavia sets out from the de Luces' crumbling family mansion in search of Bishop Lacey's deadliest secrets. Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she's letting on? What of the vicar's odd ministrations to the catatonic woman in the dovecote? Then there's a German pilot obsessed with the Bront©·e sisters, a reproachful spinster aunt, and even a box of poisoned chocolates. Most troubling of all is Porson's assistant, the charming but erratic Nialla. All clues point towards a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can't solve -- without Flavia's help. But getting so close to a person secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has out precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head?

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