Nancy Drew Clue Book 12 – Turkey Trot Plot

Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew Clue Book 12, Turkey Trot Plot, is a short chocolate-flavoured mystery for 8 year olds about a prize that goes missing before anyone can win it.

What happens

The prize is a giant chocolate turkey, sitting on a pedestal in the fanciest new shop in River Heights. Whoever wins the costume contest at the Turkey Trot takes it home.

Nancy, Bess and George have a plan. Bess has designed the outfits. George thinks gluing on hundreds of feathers one by one will take forever and suggests maple syrup and an electric fan instead.

Then on the morning of the race the shop owner comes out with no turkey and an armful of magazines, tells everyone it's gone, and announces that a child must have taken it. She hangs a sign on her door. NO CHILDREN ALLOWED.

So the Clue Crew take the case, because it isn't fair to blame every kid in town for something one person did.

This is a very tidy little mystery, and I mean that as a compliment. Three suspects, all with a motive involving chocolate. A friend in a Swiss costume carrying a suspiciously large bag. A boy whose dad sells hot chocolate from a van and who was heard promising to show the shop owner what's what. And a whole club of children who worship chocolate and had their own costumes ruined.

Nancy writes everything in her clue book with a purple pen, and the evidence is exactly the sort a young reader can hold in their head. Three feathers on a floor. Two colours. A timeline between nine o'clock and half past ten.

Better still, the book stops near the end, lists what has been ruled out, and asks your reader to have a go before turning the page. If they like being ahead of the detective, that's the bit they'll remember.

Two small things for a British household. This is an American town and an American holiday, so Thanksgiving and third grade turn up without explanation. None of it gets in the way, but you may get asked what a Turkey Trot is. And the whole cast is powered by sugar, so expect requests.

The other thing to know is that it's gentle. Nothing frightening happens. The worst moment is George going head first into a vat of melted chocolate to rescue a bracelet, which is treated as exactly the disaster it is.

What to read next

It is the twelfth of the Clue Books, and it reads perfectly well on its own. If they finish it hungry for the next case, The Tortoise and the Scare sends the same three girls on a school trip to a wildlife centre where a sixty-year-old tortoise gets out of its enclosure.