Everyday espionage

Move over, Austin Powers: nerds and spies star in Nicholas Tucker's choice of new teenage fiction

Although adolescence is associated with stormy confrontations, there is always time and room for less dramatic preoccupations as well. As Lesley Howarth shows in her brilliant and heart-warming Carwash (Puffin, £4.99), everyday life can also be pretty eventful so long as subjects like sibling rivalry, inappropriate self-images and early romance remain on the agenda. While little overt happens in this story, an enormous amount is going on in terms of relationships, self-realisation and personal decisions, momentous only to those concerned.

During one long, hot summer, Howarth's juvenile characters slowly define themselves through the sort of inconsequential dialogue spoken in real life. Teenage heroes and villains are replaced by recognisable characters with parents to match. As a snapshot of untraumatised adolescence in contemporary Britain, this novel cannot be faulted. It is also very funny at moments, just as teenagers themselves can be. One of the best contemporary writers for the young, Howarth is still going from strength to strength.

Linda Newbery is another author to watch with The Shell House (David Fickling Books, £10.99), her most ambitious novel yet. Made up of two parallel stories, one set in contemporary times and the other in the First World War, her book is a serious attempt to explore a number of important moral and intellectual issues. The various arguments that arise from the text about gender, religion, responsibility for others and the nature of war are made more urgent because they actually effect the lives of her main characters.

If this plain-speaking story had been published 50 years ago, it would have caused a critical explosion as large as any of those described on the battlefields in its pages. But although some of its once-controversial attitudes have now been articulated enough elsewhere to have lost any shock value, new generations of readers still need this type of probing discussion in their fiction – particularly when it comes in a story gripping enough in its own right. Ending on a tantalising note of uncertainty, this is a novel to read, think about, and then read again.

The American writer Gennifer Choldenko is not a familiar name, but her Notes from a Liar and her Dog (Bloomsbury, £5.99) should change that. The main character, Ant (short for Antonia), is continually stroppy, and tells lies that always get found out. The only object that she loves is her tiny dog, Pistachio, who is old and smelly. For her two sisters, her critical mother and her self-deluding father, Ant has nothing but a contempt which is returned with interest.

Yet this is not a depressing story; Ant's acid wit is always grimly amusing, and there are enough well-meaning figures to help her towards a better way. But first there are a series of adventures to get through, mostly concerning the little dog and the way he manages to land his mistress in trouble. There are many stories around about being disliked and misunderstood when young, but few as sensitive and ultimately triumphant as this.

Sharon Creech's Ruby Holler (Bloomsbury, £10.99) is set in an uncaring orphanage. Although such places have disappeared from the Western world, they are still going strong in juvenile fiction as the ultimate symbol of the institutional deprivation from which it is always so exciting, as well as satisfying, to escape.

In this story Dallas and Florida, a damaged and damaging pair of twins, are farmed out to an elderly couple. After a shaky start both sides take to each other, but while this could sound sentimental, Creech is another American author with an astringent wit and cold eye when it comes to spying out the faults in her characters. Dallas and Florida are by no means immediately loveable, but this never seems to matter. Once it was appealing literary orphans like Heidi and Anne of Green Gables who had to charm initially suspicious adult carers. Today it is the grumpy, dispossessed orphans themselves who have to be won over by their patient parent substitutes, with a happy ending – in this case – in doubt until the last page.

Lynne Markham always gives excellent value, but Blazing Star (Egmont, £4.99) must be her best book yet. Its hero is Geoffrey, a proud-to-be nerd, who likes astronomy, Wagner and old-time dancing with his grandmother. Unfortunately he also attends a tough, inner-city comprehensive where these activities are looked upon with unfriendly disbelief. Lacking support from his mysteriously absent parents, he invents a Red Indian brave as an imaginary companion so lifelike he occasionally becomes real. With his help and example, Geoffrey at last makes a stand at school, aided by a bemused but finally affectionate tougher girl pupil.

He also gains enough strength to face up to the fact that his parents have died in an air crash. Like its hero, this story is interestingly weird and never in the least predictable. It also gets over its main points in half the length taken by many other authors involved in that comparatively new phenomenon, the long teenage novel.

Anthony Horowitz's Skeleton Key (Walker Books, £4.99) is a very different matter – nothing less than a return to the traditional Boy's Own adventure story, in this case featuring super-spy Alex, Britain's youngest serving M16 agent. Only partially similar to a James Bond story – when attractive fellow-teenager Sabrina comes into the 14-year-old hero's bedroom, it is only to brush his lips with hers – the main action concentrates on different enemy agents' attempts to eliminate young Alex and his inevitably more effective responses. Eyes narrow, lock on or are filled with hate at regular intervals, and sheets are torn effortlessly into strips useful for tying up or gagging villains at a moment's notice.

It is no surprise when Alex finally saves the world, having done so once before in a previous story, Point Blanc. Oddly enough, this nonsense remains not just readable but almost convincing – a tribute to its prolific author's assured professionalism. E

Nicholas Tucker is the author of the new Rough Guides to Children's Books, for ages 0-5 and 5-11