Last Saturday, the Financial Times had a nice review of Three Diamonds and a Donkey, written by the novelist James Lovegrove.
Josh Lacey’s Misfitz adventures starring the extended Amis/Fitzroy clan, a tangled thicket of half-siblings and step-parents, read like a dream. They are at once traditional and modern, with Blytonesque youngsters thwarting crooks and thieves in the era of computers and mobile phones.
The setting for this third instalment is Marrakech, where young Ben Amis’s stepmother-to-be, Hollywood actress Celia, loses her hugely expensive engagement ring. The obvious culprit is a Moroccan street kid, Tariq, whom the police duly arrest. Ben, however, convinced of Tariq’s innocence, sets out to clear the boy’s name and recover the ring.
In addition to its mystery-solving aspects the novel explores moral conundrums, the grey areas between right and wrong. But its target readership will principally enjoy the exotic location and a plot that sees children consistently outwitting adults.