Murder and puppetry come to the village of Bishop's Lacey...This is the second novel in the highly acclaimed Flavia de Luce mystery series. 'I was lying dead in the churchyard...' So says eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce - but soon a murder provides a gruesome distraction from her own death...A travelling puppet show arrives in the sleepy English village of Bishop's Lacey, and everyone gathers to watch a performance of Jack and the Beanstalk in the village hall. But a shadow is cast over proceedings when a shocking murder takes place during the performance - a murder which strangely echoes a tragedy that occurred many years before. For Flavia, undoing the complex knot that ties these strands together will test her precocious powers of deduction to the limit - and throw a revealing light into some of the darker corners of the adult world...
