Eleven year old Flavia de Luce is "banished" to Miss Bodycote's Female Academy in Canada; where her mother Harriet once attended. On her first day, a charred and mummified body tumbles out of a brick chimney. Now while attending classes, making friends and enemies, and assessing the school's stern head mistress and faculty, Flavia is on the hunt for the victim's identity, etc. Flavia is up to the task--but her true destiny has yet to be revealed.