The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

by Alan Bradley (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $3.42

  The story opens with the immortal words 'I was lying dead in the churchyard' (spoken, astonishingly, by Flavia herself), and ends with a funeral watched by the De Luce family on a newly installed television set. In between, Alan Bradley weaves a hauntingly nightmarish tale that involves Punch & Judy - and in particular Mr Punch's nemesis, the hangman, Jack Ketch - a frighteningly realistic puppet show, and a hitherto unexplored corner of Bishop's Lacey known as Gibbet's Wood.

  The plot, beginning with the arrival in Bishop's Lacey of a travelling puppet show, features a grisly murder during a performance of Jack and the Beanstalk in the village hall and reaches back to an earlier, even nastier crime centring on an ancient, rotting gibbet that has lain like a shadow over the village for years. For Flavia, undoing the complex knot that ties these strands together will test her precocious powers of deduction to the limit - and provide a shocking insight into some of the darker corners of the adult world.

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $4.06

  Murder and puppetry come to the village of Bishop's Lacey...This is the second novel in the highly acclaimed Flavia de Luce mystery series. 'I was lying dead in the churchyard...' So says eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce - but soon a murder provides a gruesome distraction from her own death...A travelling puppet show arrives in the sleepy English village of Bishop's Lacey, and everyone gathers to watch a performance of Jack and the Beanstalk in the village hall. But a shadow is cast over proceedings when a shocking murder takes place during the performance - a murder which strangely echoes a tragedy that occurred many years before. For Flavia, undoing the complex knot that ties these strands together will test her precocious powers of deduction to the limit - and throw a revealing light into some of the darker corners of the adult world...