What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust

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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 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 dander, although in her best moments she shows potential for trespassing, trickery, and other assorted mayhems.  

When Major Greyleigh, a local recluse and former hangman, is found dead from a breakfast of poisonous mushrooms, suspicion falls on the de Luce family’s longtime cook, Mrs. Mullet. After all, wasn’t it she who picked the mushrooms, cooked the omelette, and served it to Greyleigh in the 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?”

But Flavia knows the beloved Mrs. Mullet is innocent. Together with Dogger, estate gardener and partner-in-crime, and the obnoxious Undine, she 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.“To say I am overjoyed by the return of the magnificent Flavia is a massive understatement. It is a great day when we have her back in our lives with a new, and riveting, crime to solve. Brava, Flavia. Bravo, Alan!”—Louise PennyAlan Bradley is the New York Times bestselling author of ten Flavia de Luce mystery novels, and the memoir The Shoebox Bible. His first Flavia de Luce 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 novels are 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, as well as the ebook short story “The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse.” He lives and writes on an island in the middle of the Irish Sea.US

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