Children have always spied on adults: not, pace Freud, merely to find out about sex, but to find out how to live. If adults in the 1950s learnt from Bond how to travel, drive and dress then children today can learn how to avoid a komodo dragon (Chris Ryan), do a jump dive (Anthony Horowitz) or, from Herbie Brennan, write letters in code. Above all, however, spies give a child the delightful feeling that the dangerous and puzzling adult world can be circumvented, outwitted or simply coped with.

The first of Charlie Higson’s Young Bond novels, Silverfin, has the inspired idea of not only making Bond a teenager but also setting the series in the 1930s when both the fascists and communists present unequivocal bad guys. It begins in fine Fleming style with a boy getting attacked by monster eels — and, thanks to genetic engineering, something worse — in a sinister Scottish lake.

Unfortunately, it all goes downhill from there. Making young James an Etonian chimes with the few facts Fleming gave us concerning his hero’s background, but is less interesting to modern readers for whom public school is now a byword for stuffiness and snootiness. Higson tries to ginger up the action by pitching James in rivalry with the bullying son of an American multimillionaire, Lord Hellebore, soon to be re-encountered in the Scottish Highlands when our hero and his Cockney pal Kelly go exploring. There are no gadgets, other than a folding knife hidden in a shoe-heel, just old-fashioned derring-do and a terrific climax as James makes his escape through the eel-infested lake. Aficionados will smile at the pretty girl, riding a horse called Martini, at James’s first driving lesson from his uncle, and at the stylistic skill with which Higson mimics his master. However, what is the climax to Silverfin would be merely a passing adventure to Horowitz’s Alex Rider. Higson is going to have to do better with the thrills and spills to build up an audience of child-fans.

In Ark Angel Alex Rider, the reluctant teenage spy, is in hospital, recuperating from his near-death at the hands of Scorpia (Horowitz’s equivalent to SMERSH). Desperate to get back to his life at an ordinary comprehensive, Alex blows it by rescuing the son of, yes, another billionaire. A bone- crunching battle between the wounded boy and four kidnappers ensues in which he uses every bit of hospital technology, including the MRI scanner. Trapped in a burning building, he walks across a tightrope to safety — and that is just the start of what looks like eco-terrorism but turns out to be a more old-fashioned kind.

The wit is effortlessly classy, the characterisation thoughtful, and the tension as taut as the simple yet ingenious devices Alex uses to outwit his enemies. Alex is a captivating creation, impossibly brave but increasingly damaged — emotionally as well as physically — and his appeal lies in psychology as much as gadgetry. As in Skeleton Key, he is forced to work with the adult spies in the CIA, but with a difference that is out of this world. The fact that Horowitz has a child as his hero is an irrelevance in the excitement of re-encountering such a turbocharged imagination.

Steve Voake’s debut, The Dreamwalker’s Child, is also an ingenious and fast-paced thriller, albeit set in another world, Aurobon. Sam leaves his body in a coma and finds himself where spies and bad guys fly on giant insects — or has he simply slipped into a vivd dream? The evil Odoursin is plotting to exterminate every human being through an invasion of mosquitoes, but the dauntless girl-pilot Skipper rescues Sam. Voake, a primary school headmaster, knows exactly how to reinvent Biggles for the 21st century, and his book buzzes and hums with ideas.

Hellbent isn’t a spy story but a brilliantly nauseating thriller about a cocky 16-year- old boy who dies and goes to Hell. Conor works out how his own personal hell, forced to read intellectual books and listen to classical music, might be somebody else’s heaven. He sets off on a foul and filthy odyssey to rival Hieronymus Bosch’s. It is a devilishly funny, clever and moving novel — never more so than when Conor spies on his family during his own funeral and finds that they didn’t really love him. Spying is always dangerous — never more than on your nearest and dearest, as even children must learn.

Silverfin by Charlie Higson, Puffin, £5.99 (age 10+), offer £5.09; Ark Angel: Book 6 by Anthony Horowitz, Walker, £6.99 (8+), offer £5.94; The Dreamwalker’s Child by Steve Voake, Faber, £12.99 (9+), offer £10.39; Hellbent by Anthony McGowan, Doubleday, £10.99 (12+), offer £8.79

Read on

• Ian Whybrow, Little Wolf, Forest Detective (6+)
• Anthony Horowitz, Point Blanc (8+), Skeleton Key (8+)
• Herbie Brennan, The Spy’s Handbook (9+)

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