The Candy Mafia

Lavie Tidhar's The Candy Mafia is a detective story for 9 year olds, set somewhere that outlawed chocolate three years ago.

What happens

Nelle Faulkner is twelve and she's a private eye. Her office is her dad's old garden shed. Her hat is older than she is, she's out of pocket money, and she needs a job even worse than she needs a caramel fudge.

Then Eddie de Menthe knocks. Eddie runs half the illegal sweet trade in the city out of a shut down school playground, and he's chewing gum right in front of her like it isn't a crime, which it is.

Somebody has stolen his teddy bear and he wants it back.

That's the case. An old bear, grey where the brown has washed out, one eye missing, a patched hole in its chest that looks like a bullet wound sewn shut. And a label too faded to read that would say Farnsworth, which is the name on the gates of the chocolate factory that shut when the mayor banned sweets, and the name that used to be on almost every bar in the city.

Nelle's father worked in that factory. The whole town used to smell of chocolate. It was his smell.

The pleasure of reading this is the voice. It's proper hard-boiled detective talk played completely straight by a twelve year old with a notebook. Nelle says things like depends who's asking, and we private detectives are like priests or doctors. There's a bruiser called Sweetcakes with fists like giant sweet potato pies, a rival called Waffles who eats his birthday cake alone in an empty garden because Waffles don't share, and a playground full of children betting sweets on games of marbles.

Your reader doesn't need to know it's a spoof of a whole genre to enjoy it. It works perfectly well as a mystery that keeps growing. Every answer Nelle gets makes the teddy bear stranger, not clearer.

Some things to flag. Nelle's father is dead, which she mentions plainly and early and then leaves alone, and a friend's mother is seriously ill in hospital. There's a smoke bomb and stink bomb ambush, a ransacked office and two older boys who corner her in the street, though nobody is actually hurt.

It's also American to its bones. Candy, moms, cents, sidewalks and fifty cents a day plus expenses. Most readers sail straight past that. It's worth a mention if yours stops to query every word.

What to read next

If your reader takes to a girl running her own investigation, try Ruby Redfort next. Same nerve, rather more gadgets, and a pink notebook of rules she has been adding to for years.