Fabulous opening scene: 'It was as black in the closet as old blood. They had shoved me in and locked the door. I breathed heavily through my nose, fighting desperately to remain calm....' The protagonist, Flavia, is an 11-year-old girl with a precocious ability in chemistry, and complete confidence in her ability to handle anything. I found her charming, and enjoyed her adventures: battling her older sisters (not very successfully), investigating a murder, misleading the police to draw them away from her father, and so on.[return][return]This is a first novel, by a 70-year-old writer. After a career in television, he published a memoir, and then started a mystery novel. He says that Flavia walked into that novel, and took it over.[return][return]I picked it up thinking that I might be getting something similar to Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. There is a whiff of similarity, but this didn't sweep me away as thoroughly as Smith manages to do. Flavia's just a bit too impossible, perhaps.