Marybeth Kelsey.  A Recipe for Robbery.  Greenwillow, 2009.  288 pages.  Age 9 to 12.  On sale April 28th.

Three elementary school kids find a stolen locket in a batch of stewed cucumbers, seem to think the character who made said cucumbers is being framed, and set off to solve the mystery therein.  A good mystery is a vehicle for critical thought and deductive reasoning.  A Recipe for Robbery, with its flat characters and obnoxious dialogue (e.g., “you’ve gotten that scallywag’s bowels in an uproar”) was all about accepting the most probable answer at face value, backed by unsubstaniated statistics from the “coolest online club ever”—the Not So Clueless Crime Busters.  (To the credit of the narrator, she pauses to wonder about the validity of those stats in an uncharacteristically self-reflective sentence, but quickly brushes the thought aside to continue their one-track investigation.)  When they’re ready to make a bust at the end of the novel, it ends up their theory was completely wrong, and they happen across the real perps in an unlikely accident.  The novel’s suspense level is mild, at best.

As a side note, my mind wanted to justify why the title is written “A Recipe 4 Robbery” on the cover.  I could find no significance in the number four, leaving me to believe it was a sad attempt to seem cool.  The characters never came across as such, although the narrator can be credited as first chair flutist in her elementary school band.  Who knew elementary bands could be so competitive?

Disclosure: An uncorrected review copy was provided by the publisher.  They neither paid nor pressured me to speak well of it.  Obviously.