Neil Flambé is a triple threat: a world-renowned teen chef, a first-class detective, and a perfectionist grump. His appetizing adventures solving madcap mysteries are Silver Birch Award–winning Canadian bestsellers, and author Kevin Sylvester serves up another helping of intrigue in the series’ fifth instalment.

Neil, now 15, has sworn off mysteries since his last experience in Japan (Neil Flambé and the Tokyo Treasure). But when an English aristocrat named Lord Lane brings Neil a strange Shakespearean clue hidden in a 400-year-old jar of honey, Neil’s Sherlockian tendencies reawaken. Things kick into high gear when Lord Lane goes missing and Neil is personally summoned by the Queen to come and crack the case in England.

While the story’s abundance of squeaky-clean fight scenes and jokes are engaging, this is not the kind of mystery that will see young readers piecing together clues and having a eureka moment before the protagonist figures it all out. Neil and his friends rely on Rose, a Shakespearean scholar, to steer them through most of the detective work, and many of the connections she unearths would be obscure even for an adult. From Shakespeare’s friendship with comedic actor Will Kemp to Sir Francis Drake’s sailing path around the world to lesser-known quotes from the Bard’s plays, this is the kind of mystery in which readers are just as uninformed as the fictional sleuths.

But the revelations are satisfying and Sylvester has cleverly constructed a series that is episodic enough for new readers to begin with any book, but also grows and develops with each instalment. For instance, while Neil largely remains true to his trademark brand of loveable crotchetiness, fans who have followed him throughout the series will see that the cantankerous chef is beginning to soften in his mid-teens, even crying at one point after a near-death experience.

Smart, complex, and cozy, the Flambé mysteries are perfect for anyone who has ever wondered what would happen if Inspector Clouseau had his own Food Network show.