This bestselling series, based on the trials of an honest child born to a family of criminals, is well plotted and pacy with characters that children find really funny.
The Pinchers and the Curse of the Egyptian Cat
In this slapstick, illustrated crime adventure, the honest Theo Pincher, who doesn’t fit in to his family of criminals, finds himself suddenly on the other side of the law because of an ancient curse.
Theo and Ellen accidentally break an ancient cat statue in the antique store. When they tell their mother, Nic, she turns pale. It must have been the statue that ruined the life of their ancestor Nab Pincher!
The curse of the Egyptian cat turns thieves into honest people and honest people into thieves. Nab met a terrible fate for a Pincher—he became a police officer. Now suddenly Ellen can’t lie and Theo is becoming a criminal.
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Book Details
Country of Origin Sweden Reader Age 6-8 year, 8-12 year Book Size ISBN
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Reviews
Available worldwide from your local bookstore or online.
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LoveReading4Kids –
The Pinchers and the Curse of the Egyptian Cat
March 2025 Book of the Month
If you haven’t met them before, the Pinchers are a family of criminals, all of them happy crooks from grandma to the family dog, except for young Theo Pincher, motto: ‘A clean conscience is the best pillow.’
Everything is turned upside though in their latest adventure, because in the course of it, an Egyptian plaster cat gets broken. And when an Egyptian cat breaks, unexpected things can happen.
The story is funny, intriguing, and guaranteed to keep readers on the edge of their seats as Theo and his sister set out to escape the curse, untangling clues, encountering cute monkeys and a mean zookeeper in the process before reaching a reasonably happy ending.
It’s a cops and robbers escapade for today, witty, fast moving and great fun especially for readers exploring first chapter books. I particularly enjoy the way the Pinchers accept their inexplicably honest family member.
Red Reading Hub –
Is it possible that the unthinkable can happen to Theo Pincher, the only honest member of the Pincher family? It appears so in this latest of tales about them, which is prefaced by a paragraph about the titular ancient curse.
The adventure begins when Theo and his sister Ellen (Criminellen) wander into Pique’s Boutique, an antique shop and accidentally break the best thing in the place, a statue of Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess. Have they perhaps unleashed an ancient family curse.
Nic Pincher, the siblings’ mum tells them that Pick Pincher, her globe-trotting ancestor had once ignored a warning, nicked the very same cat statue that was guarding Tuttan-K’s tomb, became cursed and found himself unable to commit another robber ever again. Indeed he became a law-abiding police officer.
Suddenly it seems that Ellen has turned honest whereas Theo is becoming something of a criminal.
Then comes a knock at the door: it’s the shop owner, Anne Tique and she has a letter she found hidden inside the broken statue. Mysterious clues may show the family how to undo the curse, so following the clues, the Pinchers sneak out at night, into Ark Park zoo. There they have to contend with monkeys and Grizzly Gustavsson, the nasty bearlike zookeeper who makes trespassers spend the night with the poisonous spiders. Will they succeed in their mission? Will Theo ever return to his normal self again? Maybe an encounter with his best pal, police officer Paul Eessman, whistler extraordinaire, will help in this respect.
There’s a satisfying conclusion to this fantastical, fast-paced yarn (even Granny Stola makes an appearance in the final chapter.) The abundance of crazy antics are made all the more humorous by Per Gustavsson’s droll images, be they vignettes or filling the entire page. Just the thing to get those in Y3 and above enthused about reading.