The Great Cake Mystery, by Alexander McCall Smith

Precious Ramotswe, an observant young girl in Botswana, is positive she would make a fine detective.  Luckily for her, a mystery quickly presents itself - a piece of cake goes missing at school.  Precious avoids jumping to conclusions about the culprit (unlike some of her classmates, to her dismay), and slowly pieces together that in fact the monkeys are the guilty ones!

We were thrilled to discover this easy to read chapter book set in Botswana - we always keep our eyes out for books set in any African country and our son (5 years old) was instantly engaged.  He guessed early on that the monkeys had stolen the cake - but this only made him want to keep reading (to confirm his hunch) and we finished the book quickly over the course of two days.  This is a great book for kids just getting into chapter books and for parents who are sick of poorly written easy reader books with annoying characters and dull plots (or is that just me?).

BUY HERE (or even better, request at your local library!)

Edited to add that we've since read The Mystery of Meerkat Hill and The Mystery of the Missing Lion and that my son was equally thrilled by these mysteries, while I was thrilled by how the author thoughtfully wove in lessons about kindness and poverty.