Introducing Flavia de Luce, a new breed of detective heroine: she's a pig-tailed eleven-year-old with a penchant for poison, and things get interesting the day she finds a dead body in the cucumber patch. Great literary crime detectives aren't always born; they're sometimes discovered, blindfolded, and tied up in a dark closet by their nasty older sisters. Flavia's bitter home life and vicious sibling rivalry inspire her solitary diversions and "strange talents". Fearless and darkly imaginative, Flavia hurries to solve the murder and free her father of suspicion.