This is a very short story, roughly the length of a single chapter in a full Flavia book, and as a result it’s rather unsatisfying.
Flavia receives a panicked not from a pupil at Greyminster School asking her to investigate the death of a copper-plated corpse in the bath. The familiar elements (see what I did there?) of Flavia’s chemical expertise and deductive skills are all there, but the depth of background, character and even her delightful narrative voice are all pale shadows of what we have come to love in the full novels.
This took me about 20 minutes to read. It’s perfectly acceptable, but not much more and I don’t think I’d have missed out on much if I hadn’t read it at all...and now I’m very keen to get back to the proper sequence of Flavia books.
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