Name: A Red Herring Without Mustard (Flavia de Luce, #3)
ISBN: 9780385342322

A Red Herring Without Mustard (Flavia de Luce, #3)

Sarah Sammis

A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley is the third Flavia de Luce mystery. It opens with young Flavia having her fortune told by a Gypsy. Although Flavia fashions herself as a skeptic, the Gypsy's tale of her late mother, Harriet, hits too close to home. She freaks and accidentally burns down the Gypsy's tent.

Guilt and a sense of obligation, therefore unite Flavia and the Gypsy. She helps find a safe place for her to park her caravan, saves her life and takes in her granddaughter, who has Flavia's gumption.

It seems with every subsequent Flavia de Luce mystery, the introductory chapters take more and more of book. It's not that the books are getting longer, just that Flavia, her family and her life are taking up a greater proportion of the pages.

The mystery itself felt a bit like a rehash of The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag in that the modern day attack is related to the long buried death of a child. How many children, I wonder, have met unfortunate ends in Bishop's Lacey?

Despite the recurring motif, I enjoyed tagging along with Flavia. She seems to be taking more risks. I keep expecting her plans to come crashing down about her ears.

Izza

3.5 stars | I love this series and Flavia is just too cute!

Maggie Gordon

Oh Flavia, you really are worming your way into my heart. In this book, we start off at a church fair where our dear girl is getting her palm read. Scary things about Harriet are revealed, and Flavia accidentally knocks over a candle and sets fire to the tent. In guilt, she asks the fortune teller if she would like to stay on de Luce land, but shortly after, the gypsy is viciously attacked, and Flavia is on the hunt to solve a mystery! She ends up embroiled in research about a strange religious cult, and even her family is running out of patience for her curious behaviour. The book digs further into de Luce family dynamics, and the money troubles that they face are becoming ever more apparent, so readers get some nice overall plot development. A Red Herring Without Mustard is another fun addition to this quaint little series :)

My one complaint... Flavia would NEVER miss the implications of the term "Red Bull". That she didn't was just a silly plot contrivance that irked me.

Yulande Lindsay

This particular character proves something I've always said: never underestimate children but also never forget how young they are...

Emmett

So quickly read and enjoyable! Flavia is her usual brave, catty, cutting little self. Her bicycle Gladys is starting to become its own character and somehow I read that as an indication of poor Flave's isolation and inability to share her passions with her other less interested sisters.

Sarah Vaughan

You know when you discover something you love so much that you really don't want anyone else in the world to know about it? This book series is one of those things. The characters and setting are depicted so well that I find myself wanting to know them as people in real life. The third book in the series was not disappointing as a sequel in the least, but the tone was certainly different. More sadness, more grief, but no less entertaining none-the-less. Just a lovely story that I think both adults and YA readers will enjoy. Can't recommend them enough.

A Red Herring Without Mustard (Flavia de Luce, #3)

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