SECRET AGENT WIZARD BOY AND THE INTERNATIONAL CRIME SYNDICATE

A promising young sorcerer receives a letter from MI6

- Jeremy Peel

A fellow student of wizarding school stands beneath the arches of the quadrangle, looking out onto an immaculate lawn. “Everyone’s always getting crunched around here,” he confides breathlessly, in the earnest tone of an Enid Blyton character. “Whenever I get crunched, I end up having to spend the rest of the week in the medical ward.”

I ponder what he means as I wander into an adjacent bathroom and spot a bright pink wizard biscuit hovering above a raised tile. As I pick up the treat, the tile sinks into the floor, and a pillar above ploughs into my tousled head. Crunch.

The thing is, I haven’t got all week to spend in recovery. Every time I get crunched, or set on fire by a torch, or tricked into falling down a trapdoor, I lose a day of my investigation into the evil headmaster Grumblemort and his criminal network, SPIDER. It’s a mission that will take all of my wits, every spell in the book, and possibly quite a few of the landmines found in the dungeon armory.

HOG OF WAR