Young Bond 4 – Hurricane Gold

Hurricane Gold by Charlie Higson is a James Bond adventure for 10 year olds, and Bond does not turn up for two whole chapters.

What happens

It starts with thirteen criminals sitting down to lunch on a private island in the Caribbean. By the end of the day one of them will be dead.

El Huracán runs the island. The finest food, never cold, no disease, and three rules. He is the boss. Your money goes in his bank. Nobody contacts the outside world, ever. There is a fourth rule that does not get mentioned until you have already arrived. You can never leave.

Somebody has been posting letters.

What happens to that somebody fills the next chapter, and it is not quick.

Then we finally meet James, on a fishing boat off the Mexican coast, reading a letter from his friend Pritpal back at Eton. They have caught nothing all day. The water is too warm for the time of year, says the skipper, and the seagulls are circling in the wrong place. There is black cloud building to the east.

You know exactly what that means and James does not. Lovely.

It is proper adventure writing. Big weather, a villain who is charming and utterly without mercy, and a hero who is still a schoolboy and has no idea what he is going to become. Pritpal's letter is very funny in its own right (there is a prefect the lower boys have nicknamed Bloody Bentinck) and it quietly tells you that James already has a reputation at school for getting mixed up in things.

The violence is the bit to think about. Those first two chapters are a man being hunted through a maze of Mayan traps while the other criminals lean over the walls and bet on which god will kill him. He dies on razor wire. The thumbnail histories of the guests at that lunch table include one who cut a witness's throat and one who dropped a roof on twelve policemen.

It is not gloating about any of it. But it is grown up crime, described plainly, before the hero has even walked in. A reader who loves proper danger will be thrilled. One who takes the story to bed with them might not be.

What to read next

SilverFin is the one to try next. It starts with James's first day at Eton, and with a Scottish loch that the new laird has fenced off behind barbed wire and men with shotguns.