A Red Herring Without Mustard

A Red Herring Without Mustard
ISBN: 9781409118169
Publication Date: 8 May 2012

A gypsy fortune teller reveals a dark secret about Flavia's dead mother in the third in Alan Bradley's award-winning whimsical period crime series. 'You frighten me,' the Gypsy said. 'Never have I seen my crystal ball so filled with darkness.'

So begins eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce's third adventure through the charming but deceptively dark byways of the village of Bishop's Lacey. What the fortune teller in fact claimed to see was a vision of Flavia's mother, Harriet, who died on a mountainside in Tibet when Flavia was less than a year old. 'She's trying to come home,' the old woman intones. 'And she needs your help.'

For Flavia, the old gypsy's words open up old wounds and new possibilities - not all of them nice. Is she a fake, or is there some truth to her powers and the message she brings back from the other side? And when the village is rocked by another ghastly murder, how will a growing fascination with gypsy lore help Flavia to solve it?

About the Author

Alan Bradley is a retired Director of Television Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan, where he lectured on screen writing. He is the author of the memoir, The Shoebox Bible, as well as the acclaimed Flavia de Luce mysteries.