Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew 15 – Mall Madness

Carolyn Keene's Mall Madness is a Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew mystery for 8 year olds about a shop till that comes up short on its very first day.

What happens

Nancy, Bess and George are eight, and they're meant to be doing their back-to-school shopping. Hannah, Nancy's housekeeper, has one rule for the day. Stick together like glue. (Within about two minutes George has run off to look at computers.)

At the Pencil Box, the big school-supplies shop, the teenager from next door is working the till. It's Rodger's first day. The owner, Mr Gustavson, has put him in charge of a fixed-up machine that counts the money and sorts the coins all by itself.

Then Mr Gustavson comes stomping out of his office. The till says eight dollars and seventy-five cents is missing. And it's coming out of Rodger's pay.

Nancy doesn't believe Rodger is a thief. So out comes her purple notebook, with one column for clues and one for suspects.

This is the Clue Crew at its cosiest. The three girls each bring something. George adores computers, Bess can take any machine apart and put it back better, and Nancy notices things. She also knocks things over whenever she's thinking hard (more than a hundred rolls of masking tape, at one point).

There's lots to giggle at. Robin, the stock girl, never lets anyone finish a sentence and is convinced the girls are doing a school project. The shop's giant gumball machine is famous for its tricks and not for its gum, which loses its flavour almost at once. And a chewed piece ends up stuck fast in Nancy's clue book.

The clues are fair and small enough for a young reader to hold in their head. A folded scrap of paper. A receipt. A wad of chewed gum. Can your reader beat Nancy to it?

It helps to know that the money is American, all dollars and quarters. A quarter is worth twenty-five cents, and that little bit of maths turns out to matter.

What to read next

This is number fifteen in the series, and you don't need the earlier ones to follow it. If your reader gets through it in one go and wants the next case straight away, Thanksgiving Thief has wild turkeys loose near the girls' school just as the whole town gets ready for its big Thanksgiving celebration.