Dawn Undercover

11-year-old Dawn Buckle is recruited by secret intelligence organisation S.H.H. (Strictly Hush-Hush) to become a spy. She joins P.S.S.T (Pursuit of Scheming Spies and Traitors) and embarks on a top-secret undercover mission to infiltrate the sleepy village of Cherry Bentley and discover the whereabouts of missing spy, Angela Bradshaw.

Undercover agents, espionage and top-secret missions – ingredients that should produce a riveting suspense thriller, but instead Dale has turned out what can only be described as a flop. The third-person narrative is dialogue heavy, the tiresome acronyms are overdone and the lack of descriptive writing all combine to make Dawn Undercover a less than engrossing read.

Helpfully, the book’s glossary includes the following entry describing a secret code called ‘Ditchwater’: ‘consisting of such a dull letter that the person reading it gives up long before the end and therefore misses the message concealed in the postscript’. Need I say more?