Anthony Horowitz’s I Know What You Did Last Wednesday is a murder mystery for 9 year olds that’s every bit as silly as it is spooky.<\/p>\n
Nick Diamond is fourteen and stuck with his big brother Tim for the summer holidays. Tim is a private detective. He’s also hopeless at it (his last job ended when he saved an ambassador from a bomb that wasn’t there by throwing him in front of a bus).<\/p>\n
Then a very posh envelope arrives. Rory McDougal, a millionaire Tim went to school with, is holding a reunion on his own island off Scotland. He’ll even pay Tim a thousand pounds to come.<\/p>\n
Nick doesn’t like the sound of that. Why would anybody pay so much to see Tim again? So he goes too.<\/p>\n
An old fishing boat drops the guests on Crocodile Island and won’t be back for a couple of days. There’s no host to greet them. There’s no phone in any room and no signal either. Then they find Rory.<\/p>\n
From there it’s a proper whodunnit. The guests all went to school together, nobody can leave and they start dropping one by one. So which old classmate is doing it?<\/p>\n
It’s Nick telling the story, and he’s very funny. Tim hears a scream and decides it’s Mozart. He searches inside the grandfather clocks (for somebody’s grandfather, presumably). And when they find Rory, he faints.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Nick does the actual detecting. He spots the missing telephones and the twist of silver paper on a bedroom floor. If your reader enjoys working things out before the adults do, they’ll love that.<\/p>\n
One thing to know before you hand it over. The body count is HIGH and it climbs quickly. Rory is killed with a sword in a room covered in blood. After that guests are poisoned, stabbed and flattened, and a grinning skull face appears at a bedroom window in the dark.<\/p>\n
Every death is a joke as much as a fright (one victim is stabbed with a model of the Eiffel Tower) and the descriptions are short. Even so, a child who’s easily spooked may find it too much before bed. One who loves a gruesome joke and a puzzle to chew on will probably be gripped.<\/p>\n
This is the sixth Diamond Brothers book. Nick mentions a few earlier scrapes, but this case works fine on its own.<\/p>\n
If they enjoy this one, The Falcon’s Malteser is where Nick explains how he ended up living with Tim. Expect a nervous stranger, a mysterious package and plenty more of Tim getting it all wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anthony Horowitz’s I Know What You Did Last Wednesday is a murder mystery for 9 year olds that’s every bit as silly as it is spooky. Nick Diamond is fourteen and stuck with his big brother Tim for the summer holidays. Tim is a private detective. He’s also hopeless at it (his last job ended […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14385,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9028,"lr_next_read_anchor":"The Falcon's Malteser","lr_seo_hook":"Seven old classmates, one Scottish island and a killer picking them off.","lr_series_id":233,"lr_series_name":"Diamond Brothers","lr_series_position":6,"lr_series_label":"","lr_author_order":"119"},"book_tag":[1045],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[119],"class_list":["post-14386","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-adventure-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-anthony-horowitz"],"yoast_title":"I Know What You Did Last Wednesday by Anthony Horowitz | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"Seven old classmates, one Scottish island and a killer picking them off. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n