Age 13+

At the end of Graham Marks’s latest novel for young adults, we learn that the hero’s favourite writer is Elmore Leonard. This figures. The novel reads like a homage to Leonard, with its rhythmic repartee, underworld characters and action-packed plot. Although Marks is British, the story is set convincingly in America. It opens with two cops discussing a dramatic kidnap in which a teenage boy was taken outside his home. This is the story of the boy, 17-year-old Cam, who wakes from a drugged sleep miles away and makes his escape. Zoo belongs to that tradition in which the life of an innocent hero takes a wild turn through a series of accidents, and is changed for ever. In the course of Cam’s eventful journey back to his parents, he finds that they are not as he thought they were and that there is a secret about his own origin. He also meets a girl. With a cast of comical cops, phone-tappers, heavies, down-and-outs and spoilt rich kids, plus the bigoted founders of a nasty right-wing eugenics project, this is a well-crafted, sassy, involving tale of betrayals and misunderstandings and learning to be a man. It might even make Leonard look over his shoulder.

(Bloomsbury £5.99)

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