Tank & Fizz – The Case of the Tentacle Terror

Liam O'Donnell's Tank and Fizz story The Case of the Tentacle Terror is a monster detective mystery for 8 year olds, narrated by a goblin who talks like a private eye in an old film.

What happens

Fizz Marlow is in fourth grade (American school year, so think Year 5). He solves mysteries. It's better than homework.

His partner is Tank, whose real name is Tatanka Wrenchlin, a troll who can fix anything you put in her green hands. And this time the case is hers.

Cargo ships have started vanishing out of the city's harbour. Not sinking. Vanishing. The water bubbles, a black mist rises up and swallows the whole ship, and when the mist clears there's nothing there.

Tank's mum is the harbour master. Which means her face is the one on the evening news.

That's what gives this one its pull. It isn't a puzzle Fizz has picked up for fun. His best friend is standing on a hill watching police search the water, saying they'll take her mum away and she'll never see her again.

The world is a proper one. Slick City sits inside Rockfall Mountain, and everything in it runs on goop drilled out of the rock by SlurpCo, who make the phones, grow the food and own the ships. Fizz has tangled with their executives before and would rather not again.

Their representative arrives by limousine. She's a blaze fairy called Mirella, tiny, singsong and sweet as syrup, and she spots the two children hiding before anyone else does. "We know everything about everybody. It's what we do."

Is she the most alarming character in a children's book about monsters? Quite possibly, and she never raises her voice once.

The jokes run all the way through. Forensic ogres dusting for paw prints. A bag of popped slugcorn. A mayor with fangs "more crooked than a politician", who is in fact a politician.

If your reader likes working out who's lying before the detective does, there's plenty here to be suspicious about.

One warning. It's the third or fourth case for this pair and it says so, so a few old scores are already in place.

What to read next

There's another Tank and Fizz in the library if they want more, and it's the case of the runaway cleaning slimes, which start by eating the head teacher's car.