No More Mr Nice Spy

Guy Bass's No More Mr Nice Spy is a gloriously silly spy adventure for 9 year olds starring the world's first and only secret agent dinosaur.

What happens

Spynosaur used to be a human spy. Then his arch-enemy tied him to a space rocket and fired him into the moon, and his brainwaves ended up in the body of a dinosaur. (As you do.) Now he fights villains alongside his daughter Amber, his sidekick, who does a mean flying kick. Her mum has no idea. At home a craggy old agent called Sergei stands in for Amber, wearing her school uniform and a red wig.

Spynosaur has had adventures before this one, but everything you need is explained along the way.

This time the mission is to rescue the princess of Canada's pug, Pugsy Malone, from dog-nappers on a runaway train. Easy. Except that back at the palace, in front of everyone, Spynosaur appears to swallow Pugsy in one gulp!

He's sure he didn't do it. Even Amber isn't completely sure. So when his Right to Spy is torn up and he's ordered to the Bin, the prison for villains, he goes on the run.

Soon the whole of Department 6 is after him. There's Danger Monkey (the second-best agent, as he'll tell you himself). There's a gadget genius who can take over everything in Spynosaur's spy-suit by remote control. And there's an expert tracker who is now an Irish setter.

It's non-stop and very, very daft. Spynosaur's big plan is to have no plan at all. He hides in a church belfry across the road from Amber's house, then turns up at the village fête in a wig. There's a tank, an Excellent Egg competition and more terrible puns than you can count ("Da-ad, no puns," Amber keeps groaning).

The best bit is Spynosaur and Amber together. He's reckless and cheerful, she's sarcastic and loyal. When it matters, she's always on her dad's side.

There's plenty of cartoon fighting, and a couple of agents have "died" and come back as animals. It's all so over the top that it's hard to take any of it seriously.

What to read next

If your reader enjoys a hero who isn't quite human and plenty of jokes, try Guy Bass's Scrap. This time it's a robot, sitting alone on a junk pile on a faraway planet, who once fought a whole army of robots to protect the humans.