Where Seagulls Dare

The sixth outing for Horowitz’s Diamond Brothers delivers everything that fans would expect: it’s a funny, farcical take on the crime genre with plenty of action and excitement.

After months without a case, Tim and Nick Diamond are debating how to share the last corn flake, when a glamorous stranger arrives with a delicious new mystery. Naturally, the stranger is not all she seems (because very few characters are in this series) but her case is irresistible and the siblings agree to take it up.

Despite their trademark lacklustre, back-to-front and utterly incompetent approach to detection, the brothers learn that the kidnapping of a power- ful hacker is linked to a frightening far-right group of motorcycle-riding jingoists, and that MI6 and the Police are also involved for not entirely obvious reasons.

As in previous Diamond Brothers stories, the adventure takes many twists and turns and the slightly- more-sensible Nick is constantly required to bail out and save the life of his older brother, Tim. Some old favourites make an appearance, too, including over-aggressive law enforcers and powerful politicians who are very willing to throw Nick and Tim into harm’s way.

Horowitz has filled this story even more than previous episodes with ‘dad jokes’ and witty one-liners, to the extent that parents may enjoy reading this even more than their children! The charming, slapstick comedy is sustained throughout and so is the pace of the action, and a new twist near the end will offer fans hope that there are still more Diamond Brothers adventures to come.