Missing Dad 4 : Mission

Missing Dad series has instantly gripped young readers with its emotional intensity and fast paced plots.

Popular with school librarians for use with `reluctant readers'. The fourth book in this established and successful series with powerful appeal to girls as well as boys due to a strong-minded heroine At the start of Missing Dad Book 4: Mission, the main character Joe is in the darkest place he has ever been.

He has lost all hope of finding his father alive, failed his exams and is self-harming.

But girlfriend Becks is always at his side, and Monsieur Le Comte - `like a father to me, all the time I was looking for mine' - remains a rock for Joe.

Gradually, the feeling builds that something extraordinary is going to emerge from this awful darkness; and it does, with a plot twist that will have readers gasping.

The title of this fourth novel in the Missing Dad series is a strong clue to the action that starts to roll like a juggernaut after Joe's shocking discovery about his father's secret past.

Here we have all the traditional and fun aspects of spying, such as a Bentley gunship, a casually murderous arms dealer and a nuclear-powered stealth ship loaded with munitions.

But we also have the huge emotional tug of Joe's deepening love for Becks; and his desperate, reviving hope of finding the father he has longed for so much.

The settings as ever are as dramatic as the action, from Monsieur Le Comte's magical chateau in Provence to lethal chases in the Bentley.

As with the earlier books the main dynamic of the whole series remains the strong emotional undertow of a boy desperate to find his missing father