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Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
I voted for The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. The reviews make this tongue-in-cheek book sound very enjoyable.
Couldn't abide The Big Sleep. Tried to read it a few years ago and found it putting me to sleep.
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Flavia de Luce, Bradley's young sleuth, is absolutely charming. I have not yet read Speaking From Among the Bones, the last so far, but will likely eventually read every Flavia book that comes along.
The Big Sleep isn't Chandler's best book. It is choppy since he was a little lazy for my taste in melding together previously published Black Mask short stories. Still, it is complex and introduces Philip Marlowe, a modern incarnation of a knight descended from those found in Sir Walter Scott's novels. (I owe that insight to Robert B. Parker who said that he wrote romance novels. Spenser and Jesse Stone likely would not exist as they are without Marlowe). For Chandler, plot is always secondary to character.