While it’s only the second book I’ve read in the Screech Owl series, Death Down Under (2001) by Roy MacGregor is in fact the fifteenth entry, and continues the tonal dissonance from my first encounter.

Invited to Sydney for a hockey tournament and a sort of mini-Olympics, the book feels as much a collaboration with the Australian Tourist Board (“Australia…was probably the top sporting country in the world”; “[T]he Sydney Summer Olympics [were] the best Summer Games ever, many people thought.”) right up to the point where, while the Screech Owls are visiting the aquarium, a recently-captured great white shark disgorges a severed human head (you think I’m joking…).

The only response to this — causing as it would trauma for the attendant youthful hockey players and delight for the young male readers these books were aimed at — is a game of ice hockey, of course; though not one that sounds like any ice hockey I’ve ever seen:

[N]o rough stuff, certainly no fights, and no mouthing off.

Thankfully, MacGregor has zero chill and we’re soon reminded of the horrors that await us all in the real world (“Murder, however, followed no rules. There was nothing fair about it. Nothing to say who might do it, or how.”) and, after a snorkelling trip rendered in such magnificently enticing language that mere Blytonia feels like a drab and unremarkable memory, we’re finally at about page as page 60 of this 124-page book and the plot can finally start.

When Wayne ‘Nish’ Nishikawa — about the only member of the entire Screech Owl squad who you’ll actually remember, and that’s at least in part down to what a weird creep he is — gets attacked by a mysterious man while scuba diving, things take a bit of turn into Funjungle territory. It seems that the attack might be in some way linked to the booming and illicit international trade in seahorses, and MacGregor displays around this the sort of intelligent even-handedness that plays very well:

“The Philippines is where almost all seahorse fishermen come from,” Data continued…. “The average income in those villages is around three hundred dollars… That’s for an entire year. Can you imagine?”

“I get almost that for my allowance,” said Andy.

Travis shook his head. It was exactly the amount of money he’d brought on this trip, and he’d been planning to spend every penny before leaving. He felt a little guilty that a person might make no more than that in an entire year — and be expected to feed a family on it.

When a return to the scene of the attack (yes, unlikely as all hell, but we’ve been treated to like another six games of ice hockey by this point and it’s about time something happened), the kids and thoroughly irresponsible adult overseeing these sorties are shot at and flee…and that’s pretty much the end of the plot. We get some more mini-Olympic coverage, another sixteen games of ice hockey, and a hugely tasteless bit in which Nish consumes dried sea dragon remains because of (we’re told) Oriental customary beliefs that it makes one brave…and that’s about it.

Oh, some fishermen get arrested,

MacGregor has done some good work here — the scenes are all evocative in their lush ocean setting or high-paced hockeyness — and a few good turns of phrase litter the book…

“Snorkelling?” Nish said, rolling the word around his tongue like it was something a pig wouldn’t swallow

…but it feels less successful than Murder at Hockey Camp (1997) from a structural perspective — you could shuffle the order of most of the scenes and it wouldn’t make much difference — and Nish really is much less charming here than in that earlier book, his youthful ebullience having turned into something between lecherous obsession (c.f. his preoccupation with nudist sunbathers at Bondi Beach) and some sort of undiagnosed mental deficiency (c.f. everything else he says and does).

MacGregor’s interest in the well-being of the sea life that forms the basis of the paper-thin plot here is commendable, but given how little of the book really relies on it, it’s difficult not to feel like he read up an on Encyclopedia Britannica entry and just packed some games of hockey around it. Full credit for the casual attitude of inclusivity demonstrated here — I was over halfway through before I realised that the character Data was a wheelchair user — but, as a story to encourage kids into reading, this relies more on them caring about detailed hockey play-by-plays But, hey, maybe that’s what reluctant readers want.

So, well, while one disappointing book does not a bad series make, I’m feeling slightly better about only buying three of these when I had the chance to get 20-some. Let’s see if I pendulum back when I get to book #19, Attack on the Tower of London (2004), some time next year.