This January the Spinebenders book club at the New Richmond Branch is reading Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. Winner of the 2007 Debut Dagger Award, chosen as Amazon Best of the Month April 2009 and a Borders Original Voices selection, and at the top of several 'best of' lists, Sweetness is sweeping the world with its original and funny take on classic British mysteries.  Flavia de Luce is regretfully only 11 years old and as such unable to do and act as she desires. A child genius with a passion for poison and Bunsen burners, Flavia expects to spend the summer of 1950 in the same manner as every other; ignored in favor of philatelic pursuits by her widowed father, tormented by her uncaring older sisters and generally un-missed as she roams the English countryside on her trusty bicycle Gladys.

That is, of course, until she finds a dead bird on her back step. Not all that odd in and of itself, but the bird has the added decoration of a postage stamp impaled upon its beak. It is just the beginning of a series of odd occurrences at the De Luce manor house. Things rapidly escalate when Flavia awakens in the middle of the night to find a man dead in her cucumber patch. Or rather almost dead... Fueled by his dying words and the odd smell that lingers about his body, Flavia sets out on a race against time out to solve the murder before the bumbling local police destroy their only clues. Precocious, observant, bitterly funny and more than a little diabolical, Flavia leads the reader on a great adventure through her post WWII village and the fields beyond.

I'll leave you to decide for yourselves, but rest assured, as far as girl-sleuth mysteries go, Flavia would lure Nancy Drew out back and promptly dispose of her with the cunning use of cyanide she brewed herself, with ingredients she stole, after tricking her way into someone's house and picking the lock on their safe with her braces. All with a smile on her small face.