The Candy Mafia

By Lavie Tidhar and Daniel Duncan

Twelve-year-old private detective Nelle is swept up in a world of candy smuggling in this illustrated, middle grade mystery-comedy from World Fantasy Award-winner Lavie Tidhar.

In a city where candy is outlawed, Nelle Faulkner is a preteen private detective working from her mother's garden shed. When Eddie de Menthe, a notorious kid-gangster from a criminal candy ring, asks for help finding a lost teddy bear, Nelle Faulkner is on the case. But one sinister turn of events leads to another and Eddie himself goes missing! Nelle and her friends quickly find themselves navigating a shady underworld of sweets smugglers, back alley-deals, and storefront firebombs.

If Nelle has any hope of tracking down her missing client, she'll first have to unmask the true faces behind the smuggling operation. Is this the easy case Nelle thought it would be, or has she unknowingly put herself and everyone around her in inescapable danger?

Daniel Duncan's comical illustrations add a smooth layer of fun to Lavie Tidhar's tongue-in-cheek narrative. Hand this fun detective adventure to fans of Bugsy Malone and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781682632734

Lavie Tidhar

Lavie Tidhar's work encompasses literary fiction (Maror, Adama and the forthcoming Six Lives), cross-genre classics such as Jerwood Prize winner A Man Lies Dreaming (2014) and World Fantasy Award winner Osama (2011) and genre works like the Campbell and Neukom prize winner Central Station (2016). He has also written comics (Adler, 2020) and children's books such as Candy (2018) and the forthcoming A Child's Book of the Future (2024). He is a former columnist for the Washington Post and a current honorary Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence at the American International University in London.

Reviews for The Candy Mafia

[grgenius_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nelle is coming off a three month break after cracking the Sweetcakes case wide open, and creating an enemy in the process but that's a tale for another day...or at least a different part of the story. She's high on time, low on funds, and her afternoon sweet stash is running out. Eddie's case seems perfectly timed and fairly open shut. He's had something taken, he wants it back, and he's prepared to not only pay, but give Nelle access to do her due diligence to retrieve this beloved item. What it is, I'll leave a mystery, but the why it's so important is the TRUE truth hidden in plain sight that needs to be solved. Things are going to get a whole lot more murky before they get even a smidge better. Nelle and her friends, acquaintances, and informants, will have to face very REAL danger before they ever even get close to evening the score, and once the source of everything is uncovered, there's still more truths to uncover that will change more than one life for good.

Honestly, I really enjoyed this one and admit fully to reading it with a bit of old school detective swagger in my voice throughout the story. Oh come on! It practically SCREAMS to be read that way, and being privy to the case as it unfolds makes it all the sweeter! I loved the characters from Nelle to Eddie, Sweetcakes to Waffles, Colin to the butler, and even the bad guys in between! In fact, some of the baddies are reason enough to follow through because you just know that they're going to get their just desserts! Tag along as Nelle does what she does best and see if you can solve the mystery before she does...even if you do, they'll be surprises along the way from good guys, bad guys, and plot twists you won't want to miss!


**copy received for review; opinions are my own

[mykl8s · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This mystery novel has all the elements of noir fiction, all the ones suitable for a story about a savy, mostly confident, twelve year old part-time female detective. There are unreliable witnesses, threats to abandon the case, a missing client, destruction of property, openings into much bigger wrongdoing, and several surprises at the end. This is part of a series.