Nancy Drew Clue Book 17 – Recipe Ruckus

Recipe Ruckus by Carolyn Keene is a Nancy Drew Clue Book mystery for 8 year olds about a missing apron with a lost recipe in the pocket.

What happens

Nancy spends her five dollars on a second-hand apron for Hannah, the family's housekeeper, whose birthday is coming. Bess suggests checking the pocket before she wraps it. Inside is a folded slip of paper. A recipe for chocolate chip cookies with crushed pretzels in them.

Then Hannah mentions, quite casually over lunch, that a famous cook once lived in River Heights and died before she settled on her hundredth chocolate chip recipe. People say it had chocolate chips and crushed pretzels.

The apron goes out on a tree to air. By half past one it's gone.

What follows is a proper little investigation. Nancy, Bess and George work out a timeline, write a suspect list in their Clue Book and go and knock on doors. Every suspect comes off the list for a reason, which is the part young mystery readers love best.

It's also very silly in places. A body in a cupboard turns out to be a shop dummy. A batch of contest cookies turns out to have roughly the salt content of the Atlantic. And there's a stretch where all three girls end up glued to the same wire flower stem and have to be freed with a bottle of Goop Goodbye.

Near the end the story stops and asks your reader directly. Who else could have taken it? What else might be in the washing machine? Then it carries on and tells them.

The register is American all the way through. Mom, spring break, Pixie Scouts and a cookie-baking contest. None of it will trip an eight-year-old up, though you might get asked what a thrift shop is.

If you've got a reader who likes to work out whodunnit before the detective does, this is a lovely size of mystery. Small stakes, clear clues, and nothing anywhere in it to worry about.

What to read next

For another pair of young detectives with a stolen prize on their hands, try The Video Game Bandit. It's the first Hardy Boys Clue Book, so your reader can start right at the beginning, and a brand-new games console disappears from a charity auction minutes before it's due to be sold.