Treasure Hunters – Secret of the Forbidden City

James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein's Secret of the Forbidden City is the third Treasure Hunters adventure for 9 year olds, and it lands the Kidds in Beijing with a parade in their honour and a very dangerous favour to do.

What happens

It opens with all four of them tied up. A villain called Dionysus Streckting is waving a pistol and demanding their dad's treasure map. (He announces that he's one hundred percent evil, so you know roughly how seriously to take him.)

Then Bick rewinds to the start. The Kidds are in Beijing, handing two priceless Ming vases over to the Chinese government. How they came by them is book two's story. Their thank you is a parade through Tiananmen Square on a float shaped like a treasure ship.

The trouble is they badly need one of those vases back. It isn't about the money (the reason goes right back to book one, so I won't give it away).

China's culture minister will hand one over on one condition. They have to find a safe way into the tomb of the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. Nobody has been inside for over two thousand years, and it's ringed by rivers of poisonous mercury.

Meanwhile clues keep turning up that look a lot like Dad's work. A menu with their surname on it. Fortune cookies hiding a key, an address and a number code. And Beck spots a Picasso in a gallery window, stolen by the Nazis during the war and guarded by some very large men.

Your reader will pick up a surprising amount along the way. Storm explains the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square and how the Nazis looted art from Jewish families. It's only a few lines each, but it might bring questions to the tea table.

The jokes are as daft as ever. The family holds secret meetings in the hotel bathroom with every tap running. Tommy gets very excited about a painting called Naked Woman on the Beach (it's a cubist Picasso, so he's disappointed). Some of the humour about China is pretty broad too (bugs on sticks, pigeon for lunch).

There are guns and threats from the first chapter, and Mum and Dad are both still missing. It's played for laughs. Even so, a child who frets about that kind of thing may not see the funny side.

What to read next

It really is best read in order, starting with the first book. If your reader just loves a round-the-world treasure chase, try Clue by Clue. Carmen Sandiego spends her time stealing from thieves, and here she's after an old pirate map that a gang of crooks got to first.