A Spell Behind Bars (The Misadventures of Danny Cloke)

Danny Cloke is just celebrating a return to happiness and normality after the magic dispatch of his wicked stepmother, Aunt Mildred. Then he feels an unaccountable urge to kick his father, the first in a series of embarrassing incidents, revealing that Danny is the victim of a ‘Zero Hex that makes you act in disgusterous ways’. It soon becomes apparent that Danny has been targeted by Aunt Mildred’s child-hating organisation, S.L.A.Y. (the Society of Librarians Against Youth) who seek to crush children’s spirits and turn them into grey adults.

Soon the forces of good and evil are neatly lined up: Danny, his school-friend Imogen and their helper Cyril Spectre (busily atoning for his earthly life as Cyril Clegg, S.L.A.Y. founder and authorship of mind-numbing children’s books) on the one hand and Aunt Mildred, a malevolent Hobblegob and the combined forces of S.L.A.Y. on the other. The battle is on to reverse Danny’s Hex and foil Aunt Mildred’s plans to get hold of the rare island bird, which would make her fortune and allow S.L.A.Y. to control the world’s children.

A Spell Behind Bars is full of energy and moves at a rattling pace, but the humour is relentlessly slapstick and the plotting haphazard, full of confusing flashbacks to the first Danny Cloke title. Bowvayne has been billed as the next Dahl, but while Dahl’s grotesques are underpinned by solid characterisation, Bowvayne’s creations often appear paper-thin. Too many aspects of the book feel derivative (such as the Dementor-like bubbles, full of Danny’s own ‘nightmares, waking fears and most shameful moments’, which he banishes, Harry Potter-like, by conjuring up joyous images).

All this is a pity, because Bowvayne writes with verve and there is the core of a much better book within this hectic narrative.