Flavia suggested to Bradley that pigeon droppings contained the needed antidote. When Bradley was writing the second title, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, he needed to get the young detective out of a tricky situation during which she was trapped inside a dovecote with a woman dying from cyanide poisoning. Early on, he learned not to doubt her accuracy. Often Flavia will rescue Bradley from his plot problems by using chemistry.
I think, ‘My goodness, I wish my mind worked like that.’” Her first thought during the gruesome discovery? “What would Flavia do?”īradley realized, “That’s the way I am when I am writing and Flavia comes up with the perfect solution or retort. Several years ago while on book tour back in Toronto, Bradley was approached by a young woman who told him a story about finding a dead body in an alley. In fact, like the boy wizard, many of Flavia’s earliest fans are now adults themselves. She combines the passion of Anne Shirley with the smarts of Miss Marple and the crossover appeal of Harry Potter. Bradley grew up in Cobourg and later moved to Toronto, Saskatoon and, after retiring, to B.C.įor those who haven’t met Flavia, she is a quick-witted 11-year-old amateur sleuth living in a 1950s British village where bodies tend to pile up. Bradley’s wife says she always knows when Flavia has done something terrible because she can hear him laughing in the next room of their home on the Isle of Man, where they moved several years ago. She is a constant presence whispering ideas into his ear. That’s how she has always appeared to him through their 10 titles together, including the latest, and potentially final, The Golden Tresses of the Dead. Maybe it’s magic or some form of alchemy, but textbook science can’t totally explain Bradley and Flavia’s relationship.īradley, 80, speaks about his character as if she is a fully realized, breathing person, almost like a co-writer. He finds the old Victorian medical volumes he relies on for the series’ research quite gruesome. Bradley, on the other hand, was terrible at chemistry in school. She adores all things grisly or revolting, and delights in corpses and graveyards.
Flavia de Luce, the intrepid preteen detective and star of Alan Bradley’s internationally beloved mystery series, solves crimes using her precociously advanced chemistry skills.
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