Last night I read “The Deadly Royal Recipe” by Ranjit Lal and I am impressed and disappointed at the same time. Mr Lal’s felicity with words is quite remarkable and his story is fast-paced, hilarious, and unputdownable. But while I thoroughly enjoyed the madcap adventures of the young protagonists—a bunch of schoolchildren of unspecified age, but presumably teenagers—I am disappointed that I cannot recommend it for the middle-grade age group.

The reason I read this book was because my teenage...