Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Dash of Daring

By Author / Illustrator

Sarah Todd Taylor, Beatriz Castro

Genre

Mystery & Detective

Age range(s)

Publisher

Nosy Crow

ISBN

9781839948879

Format

Paperback / softback

Published

06-06-2024

Synopsis

Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire will whisk you away on a fabulous adventure, full of daring action and delicious cakes!

Baker by day, spy by night - Alice Eclair leads an exciting double life! At France's Olympics training camp, a brilliant young cyclist needs help. Her father has disappeared - along with the machine he invented that creates unbreakable codes. Alice goes to work undercover in the athletes' butter-free kitchen, desperate to crack the case. Armed with a light sponge mix and an airy disregard for danger, can Alice serve up a solution before it's too late?

A Sprinkling of Danger is Alice's fourth adventure and can be read as a stand-alone novel, or enjoyed as part of the Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire series. Look out for Alice's other missions - A Recipe for Trouble, A Spoonful of Spying and A Sprinkling of Danger!

Perfect for fans of Robin Stevens' Murder Most Unladylike series and M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman's Adventures on Trains series.

Reviews

Sue

When an ingenious cipher machine, capable of converting messages into unreadable code in seconds, and its creator go missing, Alice Éclair finds herself once more in the thick of the action, this time at the Olympic training camp, where the daughter of the missing machine maker is getting ready to compete in the cycling events.

Working undercover - and facing the challenges of creating healthy desserts - in the Olympic kitchens, Alice is determined to solve the case. This is the fourth and - I hate to say it - final book in the incredibly popular series about the clever, creative and kind-hearted, Alice Éclair, everyone's favourite spy.

Every bit as delicious as its predecessors, Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Dash of Daring offers a very satisfying conclusion. The story is packed with the usual clues and red herrings which make solving the case so enjoyable and there is plenty of code breaking to tickle the tastebuds.

Developing relationships, coming to understand others and overcoming barriers are things which Alice is good at and once again, she makes new friends and meets up with some old ones as she rises to the challenges of the case and faces her nemesis.

Adele, the Olympic cyclist, has a twin, Hugo, a talented designer, who happens to be in a wheelchair. Having taken guidance from a fellow author, Sarah Todd Taylor offers a sensitive, accurate portrayal of his experiences, seamlessly adding this to the story, but greatly enriching the understanding and empathy of readers in the process.

An excellent conclusion to an excellent series!

240 pages / Reviewed by Sue Wilsher, teacher