AFRICA HAS BECOME the most fashionable setting for film and, now, for children’s fiction. Perhaps it took the delightful Alexander McCall Smith’s The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series to remind us that the continent doesn’t have to be all doom and Joseph Conrad. It can also be a place of modern adventure.

David Gilman’s debut, The Devil’s Breath, is a gung-ho eco-adventure, in the footsteps of Anthony Horowitz’s superlative Alex Rider series. Max is a teenager at Dartmoor High, originally built as a prison but now specialising in “vigorous physical pursuits and no-non-sense education”. Hunted down and nearly killed in the opening pages, Max is soon on the trail of his explorer father, lost in Namibia. Max knows he is in danger but plunges into more by flying to Namibia, where he meets the spirited Kallie, a young girl aviator, and !Koga, a bushman boy. Together they get him into and out of the terrors that await him in the unforgiving African bush.

Stories about surviving in the wilderness are always a hit with readers of 11+, and Gilman has used all the tips that Laurens van der Post, H. Rider Haggard and Wilbur Smith could come up with.

The Devil’s Breathis a lot of fun, from learning how to use lions against your enemy to sucking up water from the desert through a reed. Africa does seem to bring out the solemn, mystical side of white writers, and there is a rather annoying episode in which Max learns to send his soul out of his body to kill the bad guy.

But the relationship between the two boys provides thrills and spills that prevent it becoming too formulaic. The eco angle will go down well, and what Gilman, a successful scriptwriter, does superlatively is heart-pounding action. Ideal for exam-stressed children, this is the first in a series.

The prolific Julia Golding’s latest, Ringmaster, is about the only daughter of two diplomats in Kenya who disappear. Bored and annoyed by having a mother who flies to the States for a manicure, Darcie discovers that her parents are spies when the British High Commission recruits her to find them and investigate an unpleasant, spoilt teenager who fancies her.

Golding’s verve and her depiction of the expat Kenyan community make this an enjoyable yarn but it is not as consistently engaging as Sarah Mussi’s The Door of No Return. This is a really excellent and original thriller.

Zac’s grandfather has always told him that he is the descendant of an enslaved African prince, whose ransom, a fortune in gold dust, failed to release him. When Pops is murdered, Zac is sent to Ghana in pursuit of clues from old diaries, knowing that sinister enemies are pitted against him. Having framed him for theft, they literally want the skin off his back – because what he thinks of as a tribal marking is in fact a treasure map.

Though the novel is overlong, its premise and Zac’s wry, streetwise voice make it fresh, funny and compelling. Compensation for the slave trade is an impossible dream, but, like Louis Sachar’s Holes,the novel proves how an adventure spun around natural justice can charm. Children too young for films such as Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland will take its timely tale of Africa to their hearts, not least because it has an unusually happy ending.

The Devil’s Breath Puffin, £6.99; 400pp £6.64 (free p&p) Ringmaster Egmont, 6.99; 224pp £6.64 (free p&p) The Door of No Return Hodder, £5.99; 448pp £5.69 (free p&p) 0870 1608080

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