Teen Spies
By Paul Bishop
“Open channel D.”
For baby boomers those words should immediately bring an image of the suave, square-jawed, Napoleon Solo twisting the top of his silver pen communicator and attempting to contact U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. They could also score extra trivia points for remembering what the initials U.N.C.L.E. represented.
Napoleon Solo and his partner Illya Kuryakin were all part of the over-the- top James Bond, “Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” “Get Smart” spy boom of the sixties and seventies. Their adventures in books, movies, and television shows dominated the media of their time. Today, similar outlandish, tongue-in-cheek, capers are part of a literary espionage revival aimed at young adult audiences. Spying is fun again, however, not only is the target audience younger, so are the heroes and heroines.
Recently, adolescent spies in such films as Cody Banks, Spy Kids, D.E.B.S., and their inevitable sequels have been doing big business with family friendly audiences. Even last year’s Oscar-winning animated film The Incredibles had a plot line worthy of the best James Bond film, with music and action to match – plus kid heroes in some of the main roles. Not to be left behind, television has tapped into the teen spy movement in the form of the Cartoon Network’s Totally Spies, the Disney Channel’s Kim Possible, and other live action and animated series.
Espionage agents who aren’t old enough to drive – let alone shave or date – have also infiltrated the ranks of young adult novels. While echoing the adventures of their older predecessors, this current crop of spy books has wisely replaced sex with friendship, and corralled the violence at a cartoon level. However, targeted for an audience in the ten to fifteen year old age range, these new young spies still come complete with high-tech gadgetry, hair-breath escapes, fantastic villains, and world-threatening plots.
Like the James Bond books before them, these young adult novels are mostly British born and bred, having been published across the pond for several years and only recently breaking into American publication.
Spy High
The characters in the Spy High novels by A. J. Butcher have completed more than a dozen missions in England before making their American debut. U.S. publication started in 2004 with Spy High (British title: The Frankenstein Factory) and Chaos Rising (British title: The Chaos Connection). Set slightly in the future, the missions feature Bond Team, a group of high school-aged characters attending Deveraux Academy – a training facility for future spies.
Incorporating many more science fiction and horror elements than competing series, the Spy High books get points for innovation, but lack the character depth needed to make the series something special. Still, these books are highly popular in Europe, where sci-fi holds more sway over the literary world. For further mission information check the Spy High Web site.
Cherub
Crossing over to American publication this August will be The Recruit by Robert Muchamore, the first book in the Cherub espionage series. Aimed at a younger audience than the Spy High books, the second and third books in the series (Cherub: Class A and Maximum Security) are scheduled for simultaneous release.
In this series, eleven-year-old James Adams is placed in the custody of the English social services after the death of his mother. His younger sister is sent to live with their distant and despised father, laying the path for later emotional conflicts. Searching for a surrogate family makes James the perfect target to be recruited by Cherub – a school hiding a secret government organization using children as spies. This is not quite as far-fetched as it sounds as the French resistance in WWII used children as scouts and messengers, or to befriend homesick German soldiers in an effort to gather intelligence.
Once in the school, James is taught survival skills, weaponry, and combat techniques. For the first time in his life, he begins to enjoy school and feel as if he is accepted. He makes new friends and family bonds from among his fellow students, each of whom have their own tragic background story.
In the Cherub books there are no super villains, no high-tech gadgets, and no impossible missions (unless you consider any ‘mission’ undertaken by an eleven-year-old to be impossible). Instead, the series strives to wring drama from a plausible environment where the characters deal with neighborhood problems and real issues with an espionage twist. Cherub agents slip under adult radar and get information that sends criminals and terrorists to jail.
In The Recruit, a terrorist doesn’t let strangers into her flat because they might be undercover police or intelligence agents, but her children bring their mates home and they run all over the place. The terrorist doesn’t know that a kid working for Cherub has bugged every room in her house, cloned the hard drive on her PC, and copied all the numbers in her phone book.
Some of this stuff, however, is a bit questionable for this age group. Smoking, beer stealing, and kissing are all used to further the plots in an attempt at realism, but could have been avoided – as they are in the other similar series. That being said, The Recruit was awarded the 2005 Red House Award for best book for older readers. Parents and other interested readers can check the Cherub books out further at their website click here.
Alex Rider
Without a doubt, the best new teenaged spy is Alex Rider. Created by British television writer Anthony Horowitz, Alex’s adventures leave similar series imitators gasping for breath and fumbling with their spy gear.
Already an orphan (seemingly a pre-requisite for being a teenage spy), the fourteen-year-old Alex is devastated when his guardian uncle is killed in a car crash in the first pages of Stormbreaker. Alex’s uncle is soon revealed as a spy for the Special Operations Division of Britain’s MI-6. Confronted with the cold machinations of his uncle’s spy master, Alex finds himself sucked into the undercover void created by his guardian’s death.
