Ruby Redfort: Pick Your Poison

Author: Lauren Child Publisher: HarperCollins Children’s Books

ISBN: 9780007334278

FIRST introduced in author Child’s award-winning Clarice Bean novels, Ruby Redfort now has her own series.

The 13-year-old secret agent has been in four novels of her own so far, and this marks her fifth outing. An ace code-cracker, Ruby has helped put away her fair share of dangerous criminals, while balancing school work and the usual teenage stuff.

But someone’s out to get her, and paranoia soon sets in. There’s a mole in the secret organisation she works for and everyone’s a suspect – including herself, as Ruby finds out. Ruby’s a cool cat but who can she trust, if no one trusts her?

There’s plenty of adventure with clues, puzzles, secret entrances, amazing gadgets and even kung fu.

Our young heroine can leap tall buildings and practically scale walls, which personally, seems a tad too much.

But then, anything goes if you want to keep the young ones entertained. The plot and the pace is indeed quite absorbing.

My problem with it is that just when you start getting into the thick of things, you find yourself at the end with a cliff-hanger.

Want to know what happens next? Wait for the final book in the Ruby Redfort series – Blink and You Die. – K.K. Wong