When muffins begin disappearing all over Europe, Inspector Le Chat of the French police is dispatched to Vienna to enlist the aid of Herr Mozart, who - when he's not composing brilliant musical works such as The Magic Prune - is known to be a top-notch sleuth. As the investigative duo hotfoot around Vienna, from the Municipal Muffin Bakery to the Wienerwald, Mozart begins to suspect that their quarry - the mysterious Don Pastrami - is not of this world...

This hilarious little book, with its tongue-in-cheek tribute to muffins, Mozart, and extraterrestrials, is full of those brilliant comic exchanges for which Daniel Pinkwater is so well known. As Inspector Le Chat informs Mozart: "The muffin fiend is the most dangerous sort of criminal... Muffin fiends can barely resist pastry in any form - but most especially, they are mad for muffins!" Luckily, our composer-hero knows how to win an operatic duel, a skill which comes in handy when he confronts Don Pastrami...

Having fallen in love with Irving and Muktuk, two muffin-stealing polar bears whose (mis)adventures are chronicled in Pinkwater's Bad Bears books, I was already aware that muffins play an important role in the oeuvre of this brilliant children's author. I simply had no idea HOW important they were, or that the Pinkwater fascination with this particular pastry dated back to the mid-1980s.

Simply put, The Muffin Fiend, now sadly out of print, is a book every Pinkwater fan needs to peruse. Don't be put off by the computer "dot-print" style illustrations - even they will begin to seem hysterical after a while. ( )

Read this to my kids today but truth be told I was the one that wanted to read it. Another Pinkwater masterpiece! It was funny because even though the main character was Mozart and it was set in Vienna....both my kids kept expecting and asking when Irving and Muktuk were going to make an appearence.
Great book! ( )

This is a great book by D. Pinkwater. The illustrations look like they were done in MacPaint. The story is great, and doesn't take too long to read. Get this book! Read it! ( )