Flavia is a strikingly enjoyable heroine, precocious, preternaturally intelligent to a fault, and not giving “a frog’s fundament” for anyone who crosses her. Her intellect crosses the border into the implausible, but such a leap is far easier with such an engaging narrator, at ease with explaining the mechanics of human decay as she is espousing that Beethoven, while “a very great musician, and a wizard composer of symphonies…was quite often a dismal failure when it came to ending them.”

If there is any real shortcoming to The Weed That Strings, it is that Flavia has shown precious little growth as a character since her introduction. While continuity of character is another staple of such anachronistic entertainments (did Miss Marple ever evolve beyond her knitting and gardening pursuits?), one hopes that the few glimpses allowed into Flavia’s past, especially concerning her long-deceased mother Harriet, will eventually allow her some avenue into maturity in further stories.

Read the rest of the review here.