Age 10-14

This is not just an adventure story; it is a designer object. Written by a graphic artist, it includes detailed fold-out plans and cross-sections of ships and weaponry. It pretends to be a notebook and associated papers inherited by the author from his late aunt, giving an account of her adventures with her rebellious brother in their youth in the Far East in the 1920s, after their parents have gone missing. With striking trompe l’oeil ephemera, photographs, documents, maps and pages from a sketchbook that purport to be by the brother (who draws with remarkable skill), it would suit the kind of reader who loves data and gadgets and dreams of being a spy. The children’s exploits involve secret organisations and dangerous inventions, encounters with Chinese pirates and sadistic megalomaniacs, martial arts, gambling dens, and lots of explosions. (This being the first of a trilogy, at the end the lost parents have still to be found.) The tone of the text is not consistently of the period, but the strengths of the tale are the frantic action and the larger-than-life characters, including a wise-cracking American aviatrix whose quips take the sting out of the dangers and horrors.

(Walker £12.99)

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