Eleven-year-old amateur detective and ardent chemist Flavia de Luce is used to digging up clues, whether they're found among the potions in her laboratory or between the pages of her insufferable sisters' diaries. What she is "not" accustomed to is digging up bodies. Upon the five-hundredth anniversary of St. Tancred's death, the English hamlet of Bishop's Lacey is busily preparing to open its patron saint's tomb. Nobody is more excited to peek inside the crypt than Flavia, yet what she finds will halt the proceedings dead in their tracks: the body of Mr. Collicutt, the church organist, his face grotesquely and inexplicably masked. Who held a vendetta against Mr. Collicutt, and why would they hide him in such a sacred resting place? The irrepressible Flavia decides to find out. And what she unearths will prove there's never such thing as an open-and-shut case.

A book for your wishlist

I was just reading another book of this series when Deepswamp kindly asked if I still wanted to read this. A BIG thank you!

I finally got around reading this as I noticed it on somedy's wishlist. Appears to be good - there has been one in the series which I didn't finish. Now have to stop for a while to visit an old collegue from the Academic Bookstore OUTSIDE her house as the weather is lovely. She is over 80 yrs and has had her first corona vaccination in February, soon she will have her second and perhaps then we can meet inside again.
Hopefully Deepswamp is still well and kicking. Sweden has had a ruff time with corona as their chief virus-expert can't change his road once taken although everybody else has taken another path and he is Speaking From Among The Bones...

One can't comment much about the plot when it is a mystery you are reading, so I stick with secondary things. Funny how Flavia made the obvious discovery that toast tastes much better hot and fresh, something everybody but Brits and Irish take for granted. They eat their toast COLD!

After a cold spring so far we've had a glorious and warm week this week, which also happened to be the first of my split holiday. Evenings are already light and blackbirds sing even during the night. I took the book along to my evening walk along the beach and read it aloud to Doggy Dearest so that she would not get bored sitting on a bench. She was a very good audience and this book was pleasant to read aloud. The dog liked especially the part when Flavia went into the butcher's. She also approved of the title, very much to her taste.

I must be really getting old - having read around 150 pages I began to think that I might have read this before - and I have, in 2018 (in Finnish, but still!). If it weren't for bookcrossing and old JEs I could not have checked it. Well, as I have no idea who the murderer is, I might as well carry on. I could perhaps make do with only 20 books and start from the beginning when having finished the last one with a memory like mine!

I never knew that the Black Hole of Calcutta was a small hellhole where prisoners of war were kept in the 18th century! I had understood it meant a downright awful place, but I had imagined the whole of Calcutta fitting the image...
It wasn't Mr Carter who got the curse of Tutankhamon, but his employer, lord Carnarvon, who died only six weeks after the grave was found - of sepsis, having cut himself when shaving. He saw the treasures in the ante-room, but never lived to find out whose grave it was they had found. He had spent already ten years financing the diggings and had come across merely a cat's sarcophagus before, so life is not fair... His house in England, Highclere Castle, is probably something the reader might recognize as Downton Abbey was filmed there.

Finished. I did have my suspicions, but certainly didn't remember how the story ended.
The book is on Chania's wishlist in Finnish, I'll ask if the English version is ok.

A wishlist tag to be enjoyed.

Thank you!! Nice to get back to Flavia's adventures!

Oh yes, this was probably the best in series so far, although quite creepy at times! And I do want to read the next one soon, this ended with such a cliffhanger!

Enjoy the book!