Penguin Books Australia

Chapter 1

'Aaaaahh!' the Human Poodle screamed. 'We've been kidnapped and sticky-taped to a huge pile of mutant slugs with razor-sharp teeth.'

'Aaaaahhh!' his three crime fighting partners screamed.

They had every reason to scream. They'd been kidnapped and sticky-taped to a huge pile of mutant slugs with razor-sharp teeth. But what the crime fighters were about to find out was that each of them also had one slug sticky-taped to their foreheads – and that these particular slugs had just been dumped by their girlfriends, which made them emotionally unstable and highly unpredictable, which meant that at any time, without warning, they could snap, go completely mental and sink their mutant, tiny slug teeth into the flesh of anyone within biting reach.

In itself, this was an interesting situation.

They then noticed that the huge pile of slugs they were sticky-taped to had been sticky-taped to the back of a ferocious and ugly rhinoceros, which had been sticky-taped to a fifteen-metre-high monster truck with a heavily tattooed person named Debbie behind the wheel.

If that was all, the Human Poodle, Foody-o, the Confusenator and Blender-Head could have coped. But there was more.

The child heroes, the slugs, the rhinoceros and the monster truck had all been sticky-taped to a giant inflatable pickle that was floating towards the edge of a biggish-looking waterfall with large, lumpy rocks, sharp thumbtacks and a pack of killer kittens at the bottom, waiting to finish them off.

Despite their unique powers and Foody-o's moderate good looks, for this team of crime stoppers things really weren't looking so great.

And it was all because of Dr Loopitus Brainspin and his ridiculous 'fifth banana'. If only they had known what the fifth banana was, where to find it and why he wanted it so desperately, they could have avoided this whole stinking mess. But they didn't know. They didn't know much about anything at all, really. And so, here they were.