Bodyguard: Target

Chris Bradford's Bodyguard: Target is a tense thriller for 11 year olds about a Californian surfer girl with a very good reason to watch her back.

What happens

It's the fourth Bodyguard book, and this time the story belongs to Charley. It goes right back to how she came to Buddyguard in the first place. She learns about it from scratch here, so a new reader won't be lost.

Charley is fourteen and living with foster parents in San Clemente. When she was ten, her best friend Kerry was snatched off the street by a stranger in an SUV. Two years later her parents were killed when terrorists hijacked their plane.

Kerry was never found. Charley still runs through all the "if only" moments in her head. Surfing is the only thing that switches them off, so she skips school to do it.

Then a great white shark grabs a boy in the water. Every other surfer paddles for the beach. Charley surfs straight at the shark! (Even she thinks it was insane afterwards.)

A scarred British man has been watching. The next morning a white SUV starts following her through town. Is it the man who took Kerry? Her panic is so real you can feel your own heart going.

The answer is far stranger than she expects, and it comes with a very big choice.

She's spiky, brave and lonely all at once. Her strict foster parents want her surfboard taken to the dump, and you can't help being on her side, even when she screams something awful at them.

There's another thread too. A teenage British rock star called Ash Wild is sorting through his fan mail when a parcel turns up that smells of marzipan. His bodyguard shouts that it might be a bomb.

It's worth knowing that this one is tough in places. It opens with a ten-year-old being stunned and pulled into a car, and Charley's grief for Kerry and her parents runs all the way through. The shark attack is bloody. A first-aid scene at a bomb site describes a broken thigh bone sticking out through the skin. Charley is also fighting off depression day to day, and there's a bit of mild swearing.

A child who's anxious about being taken by a stranger might find that opening hard. If your reader likes a tough heroine and doesn't mind some blood, they'll be gripped.

What to read next

If they'd like another girl in foster care who gets an unusual offer from a mysterious British man, try City Spies. Sara is twelve and facing juvie for hacking when a man who's never been to law school walks in and says he's her lawyer.