Thrice the Brinded Cat hath Mew'd by Alan Bradley

It's Christmas again in Bishop's Lacey, and no one gives a fig if Flavia is home. All her homesickness seems to have been unidirectional. The most disappointing fact: we traded in fascinating new characters for the worn-in family members only to interact with them fleetingly compared to earlier novels.

We have branched out into some neighboring villages because it was getting a little unrealistic that so many murder victims and their murderers would be in a village with less than 100 population. There were plenty of new characters to meet, but they were the garden variety, transient, murder tangential kind. Still disappointed we gave up a boarding school full of spies-in-training for them.

Then there is the actual murder mystery to consider. I'm trying to decide if I liked the mystery aspect. Flavia points out so many red herrings and foreshadowing so flagrantly that I was actually surprised by the murderer. This does not hold true for many of the other secrets that were being kept. Those were just too obvious, which made the actual big reveal not too much fun to read through. 

In the end, I just enjoy the chemistry. I like that these books have a fundamental of science in their fiction. They are breezy reads, and I learn something which each one. That is always a choice for my to-read pile. So I will continue to read this series as long as it is published and teaching me something.