WITH 17 CHILDREN killed by knife crime in 2007 in London alone, The Knife That Killed Me is, unfortunately, all too timely. The story of how Paul, the narrator, is dragged into using a knife by Roth, a bullying teenager he fears and hates, is gripping, but what makes you sit up is that its author, Anthony McGowan, is one of the most talented new writers around. Like Darren Shan crossed with Melvyn Burgess, he interweaves the supernatural with gut-wrenching realism - but underpinning his novels is a uniquely literary sensibility and style.

Hellbent, his breakthrough novel, was essentially Dante's Inferno for kids. Its hero, Connor, gets run over when trying to save his dog from an ice-cream van, and finds himself (and his dog) in Hell. Here, he not only has to do revolting things like eat poo but has to endure listening to classical music and reading educational books.

It's only a matter of time before our hero stumbles on the idea of finding someone whose idea of hell is his heaven, and vice versa - if he can't outwit the devils and find a way out of Hell altogether. The writing is stunning, with Bosch-like landscapes and comic riffs about class and sex, but what links both Hellbent, the prize-winning Henry Tumour and The Knife That Killed Me is that all its protagonists go to the same school, modelled on McGowan's own alma mater, Corpus Christi High School in Leeds.

“It was one of the roughest comprehensive schools for the roughest Catholic kids,” McGowan, 43, says. “My parents were both nurses, so I was pretty posh compared to some, and brainy, so I should have had the shit kicked out of me, only I was quite big and good at sport.”

McGowan, surprisingly, thinks that today's schoolkids are much less violent than in his day. “I think the perception that state schools have become more violent is because middle-class parents now don't have the haven

of grammar schools to send their kids to. It's just a stark choice of private or comprehensives. What I perceive, from visiting many schools, is that there is less violence, but more death, because kids now carry knives. Knives have become the fashion accessory and once it's taken hold, kids think it will make them safer.”

He can remember one friend of his who had a flick knife, but it was interesting to them simply as a gadget: the idea of using it on someone “just would never have occurred to anyone”. The knife in his novel is satirised as being special - like Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife - only to be revealed as a bog-

standard kitchen knife. But it still does the job of killing and Paul's story, told in cinematic flashbacks as it descends, is as banal as it is tragic.

McGowan's own journey into authorship is another, happier reversal of expectations. The second of five children, he read philosophy and politics at Manchester University, eventually writing a PhD on the philosophy of beauty. Soon after he moved to London, he got “the worst job in the world”, working as a civil servant on VAT. His only time of enjoyment was reading his way through the Penguin Classics on the Tube to work. When he got to Dante, he had the idea for Hellbent, but it was universally turned down. “I had 16 rejections,” he says.

To make matters worse, his wife Rebecca, the daughter of Paddy Campbell, the fashion designer, wrote a frothy, funny chick-lit novel about the world she works in which immediately achieved big sales and great reviews. He slogged away for six years and, as the non-

earner, became his son's childminder. Luckily, Rebecca's agent, Stephanie Cabot, was able to sell a couple of thrillers he'd written (Stag Hunt and Mortal Coil), and by 2005, the young adult market was getting going. Finally, Hellbent found a publisher in Random House. It was one of the outstanding books of the year.

“I took the swearing out, and the sexual content, which felt like trying to write a novel without the letter ‘e', but it worked,” he says. Dazzlingly clever and disgustingly funny, Hellbent won devoted fans, both teenage and adult, and Henry Tumour, about a nerdy boy who finds he has a helpful talking tumour growing in his brain which, while killing him, urges him to make a play for the most gorgeous girl in school, carried off three prizes, including the Booktrust Teenage Prize for 2006.

McGowan's mordant, rude, bum-and-sex-obsessed boys are wiser and more sensitive than they initially let on, and their literary models are the highest: Henry Tumour is modelled on the relationship between Falstaff and young Hal, and the latest is modelled on the Iliad.

“I wanted to convey that feeling of gloom, horror and terror, and the possibility of nobility and honour in that setting,” he says.

The Knife That Killed Me is McGowan's third teen novel, and his most mature. Writing without jokes meant that he has poured his comic energies into two forthcoming books about the Bare Bum Gang for younger readers aged 6 to 8. Despite dreadful covers, they have a sweetness and sense of fun that perhaps comes from his having two young children of exactly the right age to be his first readers. Excitingly, he's also writing a sequel to Hellbent, Earthbound, about what happens when Connor finds himself back, alive, and pursued by devils. Whether he, too, will return to the same school and face the knives remains to be seen.

The Knife That Killed Me by Anthony McGowan
Definitions, £5.99

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