Bodyguard: Fugitive

Chris Bradford's Bodyguard: Fugitive is a breathless action thriller for 11 year olds where teenage bodyguard Connor Reeves finds out he's the one being hunted.

What happens

It opens at a fourteenth birthday party in Mexico City. Connor is undercover, protecting a politician's son called Eduardo who's become a real friend. There's a piñata stuffed with gold jewellery and a birthday girl who VERY much wants a dance with him.

Then masked gunmen ambush them on the street outside. Connor does everything he's been trained to do, and it still isn't enough.

He flies home to Wales expecting to be in big trouble. Instead he finds the secret Buddyguard headquarters wrecked, smoke coming from the roof and nobody waiting for him. His friends have been taken. Only Amir is left (and he mistakes Connor for one of the attackers and zaps him with a stun gun).

Worse, the attackers kept repeating one name. Connor's. So why would anyone want him dead? With a coded message from the colonel and barely a day to reach Shanghai, he and Amir have to go dark and work it out on their own.

It's a real page-turner. The pace hardly lets up, and when Connor creeps through the empty school checking every room, you're right there with him holding your breath. Amir's computer wizardry brings some lighter moments too (even if one of his fixes goes badly wrong).

What really stays with you is the guilt. On the train home Connor replays every choice he made and keeps asking what if. He thinks seriously about quitting for good. It's a very honest look at how it feels when you believe you've let someone down.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Eduardo is shot in the ambush and dies in hospital, and his two bodyguards are killed on the street. At headquarters Connor finds one of his instructors shot dead. All of this happens in the first few chapters, so it isn't a spoiler. There's some swearing too.

If your reader finds death on the page upsetting, especially a young person's, this one might be a lot. If they've been following Connor's missions and can handle a darker turn, they'll be desperate to find out who's behind it all.

This is the sixth Bodyguard book and it leans on what's gone before, so it's worth starting with Hostage, the first one, if you haven't already.

What to read next

If they love the idea of a teenager quietly doing dangerous grown-up work, try Stormbreaker. Alex Rider is fourteen when he discovers the uncle who brought him up was secretly a spy, and soon he's face to face with MI6.