Flavia de Luce 1 - The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie (38 page)

To my longtime Saskatoon friends and connoisseurs of crime, Mary Gilliland and Allan and Janice Cushon for putting into my hands the Edwardian equivalent of the Internet: a complete set of the eleventh edition (1911) of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which must surely be every detective novelist's dream.

To David Whiteside, of the Bukowski Agency, for his yeoman work in bringing order to the necessary mountains of paperwork and red tape.

To my dear friends Dr. John and Janet Harland, who were there at every step along the way with many useful and often brilliant suggestions. Without their enthusiasm, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie would have been a lesser book and much less fun to write.

All of these kind people have given me their best advice; if any mistakes have crept in, they are mine alone.

And finally, with love and eternal thanks to my wife, Shirley, who urged me—no, insisted that I allow Flavia and the de Luce family to emerge from the bundle of notes in which they had been languishing for far too long.

ALAN BRADLEY was born in Toronto and grew up in Cobourg, Ontario. Prior to taking early retirement to write in 1994, he was director of television engineering at the University of Saskatchewan media center for twenty-five years. His versatility has earned him awards for his children's books, radio broadcasts of his short stories, and national print for his journalism. He also co-authored Ms. Holmes of Baker Street, to great acclaim and much controversy, followed by a poignant memoir, The Shoebox Bible. In 2007, Bradley won the Debut Dagger Award of the Crimewriter's Association for The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the first book in a new series featuring the brilliant young British sleuth Flavia de Luce. Alan Bradley lives in Kelowna, British Columbia, with his wife and two calculating cats. He is at work on the second Flavia de Luce novel.