Spy Another Day by Philip Caveney
That Mr Lazarus is an odd man. He works at the local cinema, which is owned by Kip's dad, and unknown to anyone but Kip he's actually set up home in the projection room. He claims to be about 120 years old, and he makes money by selling film memorabilia. But he doesn't acquire his loot by hanging round movie plots, or rummaging around on stalls at car boot sales. No, he does it by persuading (well, that's a polite way of putting it: blackmail's such an ugly word) Kip and Beth to go into films and steal it. Yup. Into actual films, while they're playing. Downside? If they don't get out by the closing credits, they're stuck there. No pressure, then.
| Spy Another Day by Philip Caveney | |
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| Category: Confident Readers | |
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Reviewer: Linda Lawlor
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| Summary: In this second outing for movie fans Kip and Beth, the scene is pure James Bond – gadgets, evil masterminds and clocks ticking down to BOOM! All they have to do is get into the film, grab the secret agent's ID card, and get out. What could go wrong? | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 242 | Date: May 2012 |
| Publisher: Andersen Press | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781849394178 | |
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Kip reckons he learned his lesson in the first book in this series, where he spent time in a film aptly called Terror Island. No way is he ever going to let Mr Lazarus push him into doing that again. But his friend Beth (who might actually be his girlfriend—Kip hasn't been consulted, so he's not sure) is determined to meet the suave, debonair Jason Corder, star of a famous series of spy films, and of course he feels he can't let her go alone. But, after one of the least smooth crash landings in the history of spying, in which Kip manages to knock the hero of the film unconscious (completely by accident) he realises that he and Beth have been separated, and he has no idea where, or indeed when, in the film she is. Trouble is, the characters on screen don't understand that they're not real. So, for the duration of the film, Kip and Beth are at constant risk of being shot, blown up and generally made to suffer horribly by a whole gamut of secret agents, hulking security guards and assorted villains.
For those of us who always felt Bond and company should have been filmed as comedies (The chat-up lines! The goofy gadgets! The villains who never learn that world domination just ain't gonna happen!) this is perfect. The danger is scary, the thrills just keep on coming, and deadly peril turns up like a bad penny every few pages, but the whole thing is played for laughs, and is all the better for it. Every cliché, every set piece is there, from the underground caverns to a certain white cat, to be recognised and greeted by the reader as old friends, but in contexts even wackier than the originals. James Bond is sufficiently part of our culture now, for good or ill, to be familiar even to younger readers, and many an adult will thoroughly enjoy these pages too. Just make sure you don't miss the scene where Agent Triple Zero and Mr Lazarus meet up—it's a cracker!
It's clever, it's exciting, and above all it's very funny. Go on, read it. You know you want to.
Do get hold of the first book in the series, Night on Terror Island. You won't have any trouble following book two if you don't, but it would be a pity to miss it — it's a lot of fun!
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