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Charlie Small's The Mummy's Tomb is a race-against-the-clock sea quest for 7 year olds, with three impossible treasures to fetch in just four days.
Charlie can finally see the factory of his pal Jakeman, the inventor who's going to get him home. Then two thugs called Syd and Perce shove a sack over his head.
They work for Tristram Twitch, a drippy dandy with a lace hanky and a beauty spot. He wants to marry rich, spoilt Aveline. First she wants three presents. A pearl from some giant oysters, a diamond tiara off the head of a mummified princess, and a gold spine from the very last golden porcupine.
Twitch is NOT the adventurous type. So guess who's doing the fetching?
To make sure Charlie comes back, Jakeman is dangling in a lobster pot above a tank with a hungry barracuda in it. A sack of grain holds him up, and it's slowly trickling away. Charlie has about four days.
His travelling partner is Philly, Jakeman's granddaughter. She pilots the hover-sub her grandpa built (she helped build it, as she'll tell you). And at first she can't stand Charlie. As far as she's concerned, the whole thing is his fault.
Their squabbling is a big part of the fun. So is the hover-sub, which looks like a giant crab with claws. It's got a galley full of burgers and pizzas, a chair that heats up and rocks you, and its very own chemical loo!
Charlie writes it all up in his journal at night, cheeky and chatty even when things look grim. When Philly hands him a home-made snorkel for breathing on the seabed, he asks if it's been tested. Her grandpa tried it in the bath for a couple of minutes. (Charlie isn't convinced.)
The kidnapping is quite rough, with Charlie carried off kicking and a sack over his head. The thugs march him through a rowdy pub full of beer and rum, where an old man pulls a knife on him. And the barracuda countdown hangs over everything.
A child who worries when someone they love is in danger might find that hard going. If your reader likes a deadline, a monster or two and a lot of yikes, they'll be turning the pages fast.
This is Charlie's seventh journal, so it's best read in order.
If they love the parts out on the open water, The Perfumed Pirates of Perfidy is an earlier journal where Charlie wakes up at the dinner table of a gang of lady pirates and talks his way into being their cabin boy.
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