Charles Higson: Young Bond - Silverfin

Old agents never die; they just get new authors. Poor 007 — now it's his childhood that's under the word processor, as we meet "Young Bond ... Before the boy became the man".

The plot is on amphetamines from the start. After just 12 pages, a character has cut a fishing hook from his flesh, been attacked by hundreds of huge eels, and confronted a disfigured monster.

Then we're off to James at school. It's Eton, of course, with graphic details that should see enrolments drop. Bond-the-boy makes an enemy with too many teeth. His enemy's Dad is an armaments tycoon with sulphurous breath, who cheats at sport. "Subtle" does not leap to mind.

Protracted physical contests become a motif. So does sadism. Back in Scotland, where he is driven around in an Aston Martin and a Bentley (brand names appear early in James' life), he tramps across the moors with a lower-class chum, meets a Pinkertons agent, breaks into a castle where something nasty is happening in the water.

The connection to reality becomes more and more tenuous. A boy breaks his leg and crawls off casually for a spot of first aid. James finds himself alone with a mad German scientist and a ranting billionaire who plans to create super-warriors. Am I giving the plot away? Does it matter?

The funny thing is that apart from some carefully, heavily-inserted chunks of back story — his parents fall off a mountain; his Scottish treasure, May, makes him eat his porridge; his black comma of hair drops over his grey-blue eyes — the story has little connection with Ian Fleming's Bond.

Most of the time it's a Jolly School Chaps adventure. James says things like, "Really? How exciting", while his Uncle Max tells long World War I stories. He reads Bulldog Drummond, makes a secret compartment in his shoe for a folding knife, climbs a tree and jumps on to a battlement. Girls are mostly irrelevant, though a comely circus lass wrestles with him, which gives James a new perspective.

It makes you realise how Fleming's on narratives were basically Boys' Own Paper with R16 bits. A few of those bits pop up here, including some very squirmy stuff with the eels.

The book, written by The Fast Show's Charlie Higson, seems old-fashioned and didactic for young readers; limited and stereotyped for adult readers. I guess it's really a sort of delayed childhood nostalgia and it doesn't do that too badly at all.

* David Hill is a Taranaki writer whose new book for teenage readers, Running Hot, is out now.

* Puffin, $16.95