posted on 17 Jun 2018

The Book Spy by Mark Carton

“Welcome to the world of the Book Spies. This book explains the history of the secretive and highly skilled agency called The Children’s Reading Intelligence Agency (CRIA).

In the beginning there were just two agents and a simple idea to send messages. They linked with others and the network became global, with agents all over the world.”

So starts Mark Carton’s engaging and thoroughly enjoyable new publication, The Book Spy. This is clearly destined to be the first in a series and from that perspective it does all the heavy lifting in terms of explaining the background to the creation and operation of the CRIA.

What we get is a series of events and historical moments that end up being interlinked and that take us from the war time creation of this highly secret operation in 1941 through to the modern day. The structure of the book makes each of these moments almost self-sufficient, a series of short stories in their own right and it isn’t until we’ve finished and come up to the present day that we see how 1941 links to 1958, on to 1968, 2008 and finally 2018.

Carton’s cunning idea is to create a code-based intelligence agency based on books and children who love reading books. By the use of a shared set of books children in the spy network across the globe can create and decipher codes that can be used in momentous situations to influence world events. And, of course, the bonus is that adults are never going to suspect that its children and their books who are the principle players in the world of global politics.

We discover that the idea for the Agency was created in 1941 when, during the Nazi occupation, there was a dire need for safe, secret communication between Britain and the European underground fighters - especially in Belgium, where opposition to invasion was crucial to the Allies war effort. Sophia and Thomas, live with their father in Bletchley Park and unexpectedly chance upon a way of making a code using their favourite books that offers a safe way of getting messages through to the Resistance. Meanwhile in Belgium, two other children, Nina and Lucas, have also stumbled on the same idea. Bringing them together is the start of something big.

As we move forward in time we visit Australia where Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, initiates another branch of CRIA in order to stop the illegal poaching of endangered species and on to 1968 when the very existence of the CRIA is threatened by a traitor in their ranks. This we discover leads to the organisation going into cold storage until 2008 when Kevin and Paula become the new recruits to take up the challenge.

But the threat to the CRIA isn’t over and as we move into 2018 our newest potential recruits, Anya and Daniel, are part of an exciting and unexpected conclusion that’s full of jeopardy and bang up to date - with the new technology both the saviour and the threat.

And now we’re all set for the future:

“Several weeks later, both children received a special pack from the CRIA, inviting them to be Book Spies. And that’s where the adventure really started.”

And there’s a nice little addition at the end too – an invitation for the reader to join the Book Spies……..

The book is illustrated by Terry Cooper but if I’ve got a beef with anything about this book (published by Candy Jar Books of Cardiff) it’s that his drawings are under-used – I’d have liked more of them to break up the longer stretches of text.

So, a new series to look forward to and this is most certainly an exciting start to it.

 

Terry Potter

June 2018