Blade: Risking All

The eighth and final book in the sharply written ‘Blade’ series, Risking All sees 14-year-old Blade prepared, and ready to kill having tracked Hawk down to his country estate. He makes the journey across the woods to the big house, avoiding Hawk’s thuggish bodyguards along the way. He climbs the building, right up to the tower, which – the scene of painful memories – he refers to as Hawk’s nest. Sure enough, Hawk is there, enjoying the night sky view from the large glass dome. Blade has planned to the last detail this scene for their final meeting, and there’s no way that he can be outwitted or ambushed by Hawk. But then he witnesses something extraordinary – and, as his well thought-out plans unravel, something happens that is, ultimately, to alter the course of his life.

The story is taut, intimate and wholly gripping, written as a first-person narrative addressed directly to a larger transcending presence called Big Eyes. Suspense builds in the first half of the book as Blade moves ever closer towards his enemy, and the reader shares his anxiety and suppressed excitement. The writing crackles with tension as a fragmented jumble of thoughts and memories – conveyed through staccato-like phrases, incomplete sentences and slang – spill over to form a highly charged narrative that provides an insight into Blade’s troubled psyche, his toughness but also his sensitivity.

Mostly set in the past, the story fast-forwards seven years to the present in the concluding pages, neatly ending what is a remarkable and riveting series of eight books on juvenile crime.