The Mystery of the Chemic Tavern

 In the addictive mystery novel The Mystery of the Chemic Tavern, an enthusiastic crime-solving duo sifts through their town’s legacies in support of a neighbor.

In Warren Cabral’s agile mystery novel The Mystery of the Chemic Tavern, determined sisters uncover a secret in a family of brewers.

This atmospheric mystery novel opens with the sisters preparing a display for their school’s Guy Fawkes Day; holiday customs energize the book’s early chapters, as when people watch fireworks at the pub. An artistic cousin, Mary, comes to visit, and the girls meet Tom, one of the surviving heirs of a defunct brewery. Tom hopes to revitalize his family business through microbrewing. Mae and Isla come to suspect that someone tampered with his product, though, causing people to fall ill in their town. Their investigation into the potential sabotage is revealing.

The setting is a quintessential English one, and its parish community generates much of the novel’s momentum. Clues are found near a waterfall; the girls attend a car boot sale, go on a shopping trip, and visit a manor. These everyday activities and locales ground the girls’ detective work in plausible circumstances, emphasizing their community ties and country habits. And the prose is vivid, fleshing out such sites and routines via evocative sensory details.

The approach to the mystery itself is layered. Isla’s and Mary’s artistic pursuits combine with Mae’s logic, proffering appealing lessons on objet trouvés, “periodic sines,” and “prevarications”; often, the case moves forward because of the girls’ broad inquisitiveness. But while the prospect of contaminated beer is explained with clarity, and it has no lasting harm, another character’s apparent extrasensory abilities dilute the focus and disrupt the girls’ own telepathic communicating.

While exciting clues appear at measured intervals to inject suspense, the suspects are too archetypal. Two ex-criminals bumble; Tom’s main adversary is too easy to spot. Some of the girls’ investigative methods, including Isla’s photographic memory, are exceptional, making them too reliant on their gifts and luck rather than thoughtfulness. Further, the confession that concludes the book is a too-easy strategy for tying up the book’s loose ends, and some of the internal illustrations are blurry and crowd the text rather than complementing it.

Reviewed for Foreword Reviews by Karen Rigby
October 25, 2025

 "...this is another great addition for newly independent readers looking for an entertaining mystery series to enjoy." LoveReading4Kids