The Missing Chancleta and Other Top-Secret Cases/La chancleta perdida y otros casos secretos by Alidis Vicente (review)

“They call me Flaca. DETECTIVE Flaca,” the eight-year-old narrator of this casebook insists, before launching into a retelling of her first case as a gumshoe trying to locate her missing chancleta (flip-flop). She interrogates the members of her family, only to reach a dead end … at which point she remembers that she threw the missing shoe at a mosquito last night, where it slid behind her nightstand. Flaca tells readers about two other cases she’s taken on: the time she faced an assassination attempt when a fruit cup someone slid into her lunch box contained oranges (she’s allergic), and the case of her missing salsa when her mother signs her up for dance lessons in preparations for her sister’s quinceañera. This collection of three brief short stories, peppered with both with Spanish vocabulary, as well as some more difficult English phrasing (“contact with a food allergen”) that might push it toward stronger readers or a readaloud, is followed by a parallel Spanish translation. Flaca is delightfully smart-alecky for an eight-year-old (she calls her sister “La Bruja”), and her insistence in her sleuthing skills despite the anticlimactic nature of what she usually uncovers will be endearing to aspirant investigators. A hardboiled, bilingual version of Nate the Great, Flaca and her age-appropriate grit will likely spur new interest in the whodunit. Final art not seen.