The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley

Cover Description:  From Dagger Award - winning and internationally bestselling author Alan Bradley comes this utterly beguiling mystery starring one of fiction's most remarkable sleuths:  Flavia De Luce, a dangerously brilliant eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders.  This time, Flavia finds herself untangling two deaths-separated by time but linked by the unlikeliest of threads. 
Flavia thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop's Lacey are over-and then Rupert Porson has an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity.  The beloved puppeteer has had his own strings sizzled, but who'd do such a thing, and why?  For Flavia, the questions are intriguing enough to make her put aside her chemistry experiments and schemes of vengeance against her insufferable big sisters.  Astride Glady's, her trusty bicycle, Flavia sets out from the De Luces' crumbling family mansion in search of Bishop's Lacey's deadliest secrets.
Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she's letting on?  What of the vicar's odd ministrations to the catatonic woman in the dovecote?  Then there's a German pilot obsessed with the Bronte sisters, a reproachful spinster aunt and even a box of poisoned chocolates.  Most troubling of all is Porson's assistant, the charming but erratic Nialla.  All clues point towards a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can't solve-without Flavia's help.  But in getting so close to who's secretly pulling the strings of this dance of  death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head?

The WTSTHB is the second novel with Flavia De Luce, who is a brilliant and adorable little girl.  She has a natural eye for solving crimes, mainly because her age and reputation makes her trustworthy and like able.  In a small town people are more likely to gossip to an 11 year old girl than a policeman.  She also knows all the ins and outs of the way her small town works.  The novel is a great ride through the eyes of a child, dealing with her absent father, dead mother and two older sisters that torment her tirelessly.  Her chemistry lab and scientific experiments keep her going in her odd little world, which aids her in solving crimes and assisting the local police.  It is interesting to read a novel from such a young perspective, I do enjoy a YA adult novel but even then you get more teenage angst than true emotions, Flavia is a breathe of fresh air.  I enjoyed this novel as much as the first one and will make sure to look out for more installments in the future.