Neil Flambé and the Tokyo Treasure

Kevin Sylvester's Neil Flambé and the Tokyo Treasure is a cooking mystery for 10 year olds about a teenage chef whose kitchen goes very quiet.

What happens

Neil runs his own restaurant, has a nose that can pick out a fresh clam through a closed cooler, and is rude to nearly everybody. His cousin Larry is his sous chef, his supply of terrible puns, and the only person who can talk him down.

Then Larry lands a book deal for an online manga he has been making with an illustrator in Japan, and takes a one way ticket to Tokyo.

Neil replaces him with Gary, a bike courier who lives in a tent, went absent without leave from the army, and can make a fish stew that stops Neil in the middle of a sentence.

That part is genuinely funny. Gary tells his entire life story in one enormous unbroken ramble and Neil keeps shouting at him to get to the point.

Then, a few chapters in, Angel and Inspector Nakamura walk into the kitchen together without arguing, and Neil knows before either of them says a word.

Larry's boat has gone down in a storm off the Japanese coast. No survivors.

I am telling you that because it happens early and because it changes what sort of book this is. Neil stops speaking. He cooks flaming, furious food for two days and locks himself in his office at night. There is a memorial service coming.

For a child who has lost somebody, that could be a lot. It is handled beautifully, mind. The thing that gets Neil back on his feet is a note and a packet of saffron that Larry left with Gary months earlier, with instructions to hand it over if things ever got hard.

The rest is the house style. Food described so well you want some. A running feud with a rival. Puns so bad they are a running joke inside the book. And a mystery that Neil's nose will eventually solve.

The title tells you where it goes.

Your reader can start here. They will pick up references to earlier capers, but Neil explains himself as he goes and the kitchen is the point.

What to read next

If they want to know where the grudge against the Flambés began, send them back to the Crusader's Curse. It opens centuries earlier with a chef marooned on a bare rock by a knight who had been his own teacher, left with one split sack of barley and a curse to live with.