Flavia de Luce is an eleven-year old genius with her own chemistry lab. She pronounces five-syllable chemicals with ease that ordinary people would have difficulty saying. She quotes Shakespeare, Keats, Trollope and Flaubert. She asked the gardener Dogger what did Flaubert mean when he said that Madame Bovary "gave herself up to Rodolphe"? Dogger said, he meant "they were the greatest of friends; the very greatest of friends." "I thought so," said Flavia. Though genius she is, she still is an innocent eleven-year old. Flavia helped Inspecter Hewitt solve a murder in the past, and now she is going to help solve another murder.