Horowitz is now best known for his wonderful Alex Rider series about a reluctant teenage spy who repeatedly (and credibly) saves the world.

Raven’s Gate is the start of a new series, The Power of Five, which combines his unusually sympathetic view of teenage boys with a supernatural adventure of the most chilling kind. Matt Freeman looks like just another kid in search of an ASBO, from his grey hooded sweatshirt to his trainers with fraying laces. He has been persuaded by an older boy, Kevin, to break in to a warehouse full of computer games. They are caught by the guard, whom Kevin stabs then abandons. Matt is given a custodial sentence which means he must leave his boring, whiny aunt and live instead with a foster parent, Mrs Deverill. So far, it could be another gritty tale of adolescent urban angst. The difference is that Mrs Deverill is a devil who casually kills a man on her way to meeting her new charge, and Matt is going to the brink of Hell.

A number of excellent new novels, from Eoin Colfer’s The Wish List to Anthony McGowan’s Hellbent, have played with making this jump from the metaphorical to the real, placing their protagonists among the damned. Matt, unlike these, is basically a nice kid, devastated by his parents’ death and severely down on his luck. Yet although much worse than mucking out pigsties awaits him in Yorkshire at Mrs Deverill’s house, he does have unexpected supernatural powers of his own. It was these that stopped him joining his parents on their fatal car journey, and these that, together with his resourcefulness and a friendly local journalist, help him to escape from the magical mazes surrounding Hive Hall.

There are so many fantasy series around that it is a little alarming to see Horowitz join the throng, when what he excels at are fantasies rooted in meticulous realism. Personally, I find Alex Rider’s gadgetry more thrilling than precognition, and whenever this author plays to his strengths rather than describing mystical powers, the story rises another notch. It takes half the book before the tension explodes into the sort of chase scenes that makes this author a favourite with boys — but it is worth it, not least for the fantastic, climactic scene in which the dinosaur skeletons in the Natural History Museum come to life and attack our hero. The concluding irony is that Matt finds his struggles as a “superhero and freak” are not publicised in the national press. However hellish adolescence is for those in the immediate vicinity, it remains a private matter.

RAVEN’S GATE (12+)
by Anthony Horowitz
Walker Books, £6.99; 288pp
£6.64 (free p&p) 0870 1608080
www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

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