Blood Fever, Charlie Higson
This is the second of Higson's 'Young Bond' series, following last year's Silverfin, and this one's even better.
It's got a bit of a misleading cover ("death is contagious"), I assumed it was going to be about a plague of some sort, whereas it actually involves a worldwide crime syndicate, Sardinian bandits, sinister schoolmasters and a mysterious Mithras-worshipping cult.
James ships out to Sardinia during the holidays on a school run archaeological expedition, before jumping ship and going to stay with his cousin elsewhere on the island. He meets Count Ugo Carnifex, obsessed with cleanliness and ancient Rome, and before long the action switches to the mountains, with all the 30's based excitement and scrapes you'd expect. Midnight raids, rope based window rescues, underwater swims, stowing away on railway carriages, boxing honour matches. Like Enid Blyton for the 21st century really (ie with actual killing. Quite a lot of it, really).
The supporting characters are good too, especially the names in traditional Bond style: the bandit girl Vendetta, feisty schoolgirl Amy Goodenough, pirate Zoltan the Magyar.
Highly recommended, for a bit of escapist derring do.
posted by Izzy @ 11:28 am
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