The Bad Guys 20 – One Last Thing

Aaron Blabey's The Bad Guys One Last Thing is a very silly time-travel story for 7 year olds where Mr Wolf comes face to face with his old self.

What happens

It opens on a bank robbery. Wolf and Snake crash out of the doors in sunglasses, with cash flying and a whole fleet of police cars and helicopters on their tail. Then they stop at a diner for pie and a birthday cake.

FLASH! A second Wolf turns up outside the window, with a very long mullet and no idea how he got there.

He's been whisked back through time by Rhonda, a grumpy little Tasmanian devil. She can go to any place and any time. And Wolf is now her apprentice (the mullet comes with the job, apparently).

Rhonda has work for him. Wolf would rather pop into the future and say hi to Shark, Piranha and Snake first, so she gives him five minutes. When she says she's PUNCTUAL, Piranha asks if she has to take medication for that.

There are lots of hugs and quite a few happy tears. Who knew Snake would ever sign up for a romantic comedy marathon?

Then it's back to the diner for the real job. It's a very strange one. It has to do with why Wolf ever decided to stop being bad in the first place, and it'll tie your reader's brain in knots in the best way.

As always it reads like a comic. Most pages are panels and speech bubbles, the big moments come in huge capitals (WHOOP! VRROWW!), and some pages have hardly a word on them. Rhonda even points out that the bumpy frames mean it's a flashback, which is a lovely joke for kids who've read a few of these.

It's softer than the early books too. There are long goodbyes, and Snake has a few things he needs to get off his chest. It never gets heavy though, and Shark and Piranha are never far from a joke.

If your reader has followed the gang all the way here, this one feels like a big warm thank you (the very last page says so too). It's probably not the place to start, though.

What to read next

If they're new to the gang, or fancy going right back to the beginning once they've finished, The Bad Guys Episode One is in the library too. It's where Wolf first decides he's done with being bad, and his friends take a LOT of convincing.