Meet the Maliks – Twin Detectives: The Cookie Culprit

In this brilliant new comedy series for children, Maysa and Musa Malik hone their detective skills in order to find the villain responsible for destroying a precious collection of charity cookies.

Maysa is the story’s narrator and all readers will find her great fun. It’s not always easy to behave perfectly in class – at school or at mosque – especially when the teacher is so miserable and some of the other students are determined to look down their noses at you. Sadly, Maysa’s automatic response to such challenges is to daydream or crack jokes… or to contrive ways of covering her foes in worms! This habit for mischief makes it difficult for her adoring-yet-strict parents to agree she can go on the biggest event of the year – the residential activity week with her friends. Disaster!

The majority of the story is dedicated to Maysa’s attempts to prove she is sensible and mature enough to attend the trip. This means trying her best to design and sell the very best cookies for the mosque’s Ramadan charity event. When the cookies are mysteriously smashed to pieces, Maysa is determined to uncover the cookie-crashing culprit.

Maysa is helped in her detection by Norman, the next door neighbour, whose willingness to partake in Maysa’s family’s Muslim traditions (especially those involving food!) are endearing and are a gentle way of shining a light on the many misconceptions people have about Islamic culture. Most of all though, Maysa is helped by her twin Musa. He has a ‘twin’ sense, which means he can guess what she’s thinking. There’s no hiding anything from Musa. The twins’ relationship reminds readers of the importance of supporting one’s family and of being open with friends. Musa helps Maysa learn important lessons about honesty and kindness, which are amplified by the story’s setting during the month of Ramadan.

As in Mian’s first book – Project Omar – Meet the Maliks offers readers an opportunity to see the world from a perspective with which they might be unfamiliar, in a way that is engaging and very funny. As the twins are such an enjoyable combination of kindness and mischief, future episodes are bound to be very welcome indeed.