Where Seagulls Dare is a 2022 children's detective/comedy novel by Anthony Horowitz and is the latest entry in the Diamond Brothers series. The title is a spoof on Where Eagles Dare and references the film in many plot allusions. Where Seagulls Dare is the first full-length novel to be added to the Diamond Brothers series since 1991 and was initially released online chapter-by-chapter during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic before being released as a book.
Private investigators Tim and Nick Diamond haven’t had a case for three months and are down to their last cornflake. So when a glamorous woman comes into their office offering them a pile of cash to find her missing father, they think Christmas has come – only it turns out they are the turkeys! Before they know it, they are caught up in a case involving bike-riding hitmen, superhackers and a sinister far-right organisation, the White Crusaders.
Shows examples of:
- Accidental Misnaming: Tim's Running Joke of getting people's names wrong is in full force. Highlights include "Nightinjail" for "Nightingale" and "Cartax" for "Fairfax."
- Call-Back:
- Nick makes frequent allusions to the brothers' previous adventures throughout, both in the narrative and in conversation with Tim.
- Once again, the brothers are forcibly recruited for a suicide mission by MI6.
- Death by Looking Up: Averted. Nick and Tim narrowly avoid being crushed by a steel beam dropped from a hacked crane. It's only Nick spotting a suspicious shadow and knocking Tim out of the way that saves them.
- Draw Aggro: The real zEbra's reason for hiring the brothers; she heard on the grapvine that the zEbra lived in Royal Crescent in Bath... which she knew wasn't true. So she hired the brothers to investigate, knowing they'd smoke out whoever was involved.
- Failed a Spot Check: Nick is suspicious when the client who's hired the brothers to find her missing father misspells his name.
- Foreshadowing: The book opens with Nick describing the nightmares he has about the events he's about to narrate.
- Living Macguffin: Legendary hacker zEbra, a.k.a. Alistair Nightingale. He's been kidnapped by Nathan Fairfax and the White Crusaders, who want to force him to hack the UK government so they can take over the country. In fact Alistair Nightingale is an MI6 agent posing as zEbra, to the real zEbra's confusion.
- Lured into a Trap: Jane Nightingale seemingly emails the brothers to meet her at an office building in Battersea. In fact the email wasn't from her, and the office is a smart building that's been hacked to kill them.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: The White Crusaders, as the name suggests, are a jingoistic white-supremacist group who want to take over Britain and start another World War so they'll get to kill foreigners.
- Shout-Out: Incoming MI6 head Fiona Dawson-Jones describes a teenager being recruited by the security services as "The stupidest thing I've ever heard!"
- Those Two Guys: Scotland Detectives Snape and Boyle make an appearance, arresting the brothers after they've dodged an assassination attempt only to be ordered to release them.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To Where Eagles Dare: the brothers have to infiltrate a hostile base that is only accessible by cable car.
