Numb Were the Beadsman’s Fingers is the last Flavia de Luce mystery

Flavia de Luce, the young chemist and detective of Buckshaw, has one last case. Numb Were the Beadsman’s Fingers, the twelfth novel in Alan Bradley’s series, was published in North America on 3 November and is due in the UK on 19 November.

A nun is found dead at Golgotha House, near Buckshaw, and as the Sisters prepare her for burial they find she had been living under a false identity for years. Flavia and Dogger, now working together as Arthur Dogger and Associates, must solve a decades-old crime that reaches across the ocean.

Bradley died earlier this year at the age of 87. He began writing full time after retiring from a career in television engineering, and his first novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, won the Agatha and Macavity awards in 2009. The series has sold more than six million copies.

We are adding Alan Bradley and the full Flavia de Luce reading order to The Recurring Cast soon.