Agent Z Meets the Masked Crusader

Review also includes:

Agent Z Goes Wild, 176pp, ‎978-0099400738

There are four titles in the ‘Agent Z’ series. They were first published 10 years ago and no doubt owe their sudden re-emergence to Haddon’s Whitbread winning The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

The books are great fun, fast paced, highly imaginative and well worth promoting amongst upper junior boys. The humour is easy and laddish, the dialogue is at times very droll and Haddon has avoided simplistic character stereotyping. Lots of fantasy comic strip scenarios are relayed within the yarn, which are often little gems in themselves.

In book one Ben and his fellow members of the Crane Grove Crew decide to pep up the end of term with a few pranks in the name of Agent Z. They are a wily trio, bright mischievous boys who usually think/talk their way out of every predicament, but they get the willies (fleetingly) when someone seems to be beating them at their own game.

Book two sees Ben, Jenks and Barney in the wilds of Wales, where they are meant to suffer an Outward Bound week. Naturally they liven things up with their good humour, role-playing trips into their fertile imaginations and sheer naughtiness. What they haven’t reckoned with is that yet again there’s someone else on their case and that someone is better at livening things up than they are!