Treasure Hunters – The Plunder Down Under

James Patterson's Treasure Hunters The Plunder Down Under is a fast, funny adventure for 9 year olds about four children whose parents are arrested the minute they reach Australia.

What happens

The Kidds live on a boat and hunt treasure for a living. Bick tells the story. His twin Beck argues with him constantly, even underwater. Storm remembers every fact she has ever read. Tommy falls in love roughly once a chapter, which is how most of the trouble starts.

This one sits well into the series and says so, with a cheerful nod back to the last adventure, but nothing in it needs the earlier books.

It opens on a wreck off Tonga, where the twins slip away from the group after something shiny and get wrapped up by a giant octopus. Then a six-foot pirate with blonde dreadlocks called Charlotte Badger comes aboard, admires all their treasures, and leaves with their mainsail in ribbons and a stolen black opal tucked inside their pottery.

Customs find the opal. Their parents are led away in handcuffs. Four children are left on a boat in Sydney harbour, stuck in quarantine, with a pirate a full day ahead of them and a reef of gold somewhere in the Outback.

The chapters are very short and most of them end on a nasty surprise, so it's very hard to put down. Storm answers questions in numbers. Uncle Richie talks entirely in Teddy Roosevelt quotes and says "Bully!" about everything. And Charlotte Badger speaks almost pure Australian, with Storm translating for the rest of them (a ningnong, apparently, is someone who'd be nuts to try it). Your reader will be doing the same at the tea table by Tuesday.

It's an American family, so it's Mom and Dad and flashlights all the way through. Nothing a child will trip on.

One small thing to know. Dad hands out the wreck's history as brightly as he does everything else, including the fact that the local chief's warriors killed most of the crew before the ship went down. It's one line, then they're in the water.

What to read next

If they like the idea of a child setting out to clear a grown-up's name, Calista Chase Time Sleuth is also in the library. Calista's grandmother finds a famous pirate wreck, the world decides she must have pocketed the gold, and the reporters camp outside her front door.