Flavia de Luce has taken on the mentorship of her odious moon-faced cousin Undine, who has come to live at Buckshaw following the death of her mother. Undine’s main talent, aside from cultivating disgusting habits, seems to be raising Flavia’s hackles, although in her best moments she shows potential for trespassing, trickery, and other assorted mayhem.
When Major Greyleigh, a local recluse and former hangman, 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? “I have to admit,” says Flavia, an expert in the chemical nature of poisons, “that I’d been praying to God for a jolly good old-fashioned mushroom poisoning. Not that I wanted anyone to die, but why give a girl a gift such as mine without giving her the opportunity to use it?”
Nothing ever happens in sleepy little Fairhill, Vermont. But this morning that will change. And one innocent question could be deadly. What have you done?
The teenagers get their kicks telling ghost stories in the old graveyard. The parents trust their kids will arrive home safe from school. Everyone knows everyone. Curtains rarely twitch. Front doors are left unlocked.
But Diana Brewer isn’t lying safely in her bed where she belongs. Instead she lies in a hayfield, circled by vultures, discovered by a local farmer.
How quickly a girl becomes a ghost. How quickly a town of friendly, familiar faces becomes a town of suspects, a place of fear and paranoia.
Someone in Fairhill did this. Everyone wants answers.
Con veintiocho años, pero aún instalada en casa de sus padres, Wendolin Kramer adora los cómics, se cree Súper Chica y, desde un despacho improvisado en su cuarto, fantasea con convertirse en detective privado por las calles de una Barcelona fantasmal. Todo cambia cuando llama a su puerta un caso real, que, sin embargo, no le queda muy claro. ¿Por qué le piden que averigüe dónde se encuentra un día preciso el escritor Francis Dómino? ¿Y qué relación existe entre él y la autora superventas Vendolin Woolfin? Parodia de novela negra, con innumerables referencias a la cultura pop, esta historia no solo ha consagrado a Laura Fernández como una de las voces más originales de nuestras letras, sino que sigue fascinando con sus personajes impredecibles, sus diálogos desternillantes y su inagotable imaginación narrativa.