Hold the Mayo

A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Audio-version.
Perhaps this was annoying because the child-like voice with the excruciatingly plummy accent of the reader grated on me.  It's a tone of voice very popular in theatre because the nasality is very penetrating and projects really well.  Nine cd's of it is very wearing.
On to the story - Why do I expect things in mysteries to make sense?  What sort of infant baptism holds a fragile child by the ankle and dunks them like Achilles?  Why would a murderer hang a body from a statue when leaving it where it was would hide it longer while hanging it would expose the murderer to a bigger chance of being discovered?  Kill, hang the body, leaving the weapon in place?  Oh yes, yes, people under stress do strange things.  Usually, they just run away though, or wipe their fingerprints.
And if Flavia only wears dresses, she must give the villagers a lovely view when she rides Gladys with her feet on the handlebars.
I was surprised by the amount of blood that came from a non-fatal head wound.  Not that I'm a forensics expert or anything, but ... who would have thought the old woman had so much blood in her?
The first book in this series annoyed me by having poison ivy in an English garden.  I keep asking Brits about that and get no clear answer.  I suppose it's far-fetched enough having an 11 year old genius-chemist.
The family conflict is getting old.  You know, I only had one older sister who did things like tie me to chairs so I wouldn't bug her when her friends came over, but even I think this family is out of control.  And the father needs a good smack up-side his head and a torch put to his stupid stamp collection.
What is my problem?
I really appreciated the addition of Porcelain (not sure of spelling because this was the audio) when she behaved with good sense, cutting off exploration of a dark place or fetching help when the plot called for it.  But how old is she?  She has no parents, so where does she live ... besides "London"?
Next time I will read the book (I will keep reading them) because the turn of phrase is good.


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