Silliness runs rampant in this second book in the Ghastly McNastys series. The McNastys are twin pirates, though the illustrations show them not to be identical. The McNasty twins “were Gruesome and Grisly. And that was just their names…they hated two children in particular. Tat and Hetty, who had stopped them from finding the lost treasure of Little Snoring.” (p. 8, Book 1)

The action goes back and forth between the pirate brothers and Tat and Hetty. They both want the treasure they think is hidden inside Little Snoring Castle.

The story begins as school, in Miss Green’s class, is letting out for the summer. All the children and town folk are eager to audition for the Hollywood movie- Raiders of the Lost Shark- that is about to begin filming in Little Snoring Castle. The McNastys only audition to get inside the castle, so they can search for treasure, and since they already are pirates, they instantly get cast for the movie. In the meantime, Tat and Hetty have come up with a plan to capture the McNastys by tricking them into dungeon #244. Tat and Hetty make a fake treasure map marking dungeon #244 as the site of the treasure and hide it inside the chimney for the McNastys to find. The McNastys find the map, but the map is ruined before they can study it. They are about to torture the treasure’s location from Mrs. Slime and Miss Green, when Miss Green simply tells them the the correct dungeon’s number, # 433. When the pirates keep Mrs. Slime and Miss Green locked up in dungeon #53, one begins to cry and the other one’s nose runs so much the liquids begin to rise to the point of drowning them. A little later, Tat, Hetty, Big Wig, Dog, and Polly the parrot are escaping up a chimney from the pirates. The pirates light a fire, but Polly’s sea gull friends bring them a bucket full of Mrs. Slime’s and Miss Green’s snot and tears to douse the flames. It, also, sticks the pirates together for awhile. Tat and Hetty trade their knowledge of the treasure’s location ( dungeon #433) for the key to Mrs. Slime’s and Miss Green’s dungeon from the McNastys. Nasty as they are, the pirates throw the key into the moat and later release the movie’s sharks into the moat just as Tat finds the key. Hetty distracts the sharks away from Tat using strawberry jam sandwiches. What the McNastys find in #433 is not what they expected. Inside the secret room of #433 spider webs are strewn everywhere. There is a giant silver orb in the center of the room. The McNastys slice it open with their cutlasses. The diamonds they expect to fall out don’t. What does fall out are thousands of baby spiders. The McNastys run only to be swallowed alive by the sharks in the moat, which jump and free themselves into the open sea.