On a spring morning in 1951, 11-year-old chemistry lover and gifted detective Flavia de Luce goes with her family to the train station to meet her mother Harriet, who has been missing for a long time. A few moments before the train arrives on the platform of an English village—Bishop’s Lacey— a tall stranger from the crowd whispers a mysterious message into the girl’s ear. In the next second, he dies under the wheels of the steam locomotive—apparently someone deliberately pushed him onto the tracks… Who was that man? Why did he choose Flavia to pass on his message? And what did his last words mean?
Searching for answers, the young detective finds a film reel in the attic of the old Buckshew mansion. The recording helps her uncover a host of amazing secrets of the eccentric de Luce family—secrets in which none other than Winston Churchill is involved! Flavia will do anything—even fly into the sky on a biplane “Blue Ghost” that belonged to Harriet—to learn the truth about her mother.