I recently met Julian Sedgwick, and felt terrible that I've read several by Marcus, but none by his (older!) brother. Completely different in genre and style, this is definitely going to appeal to an upper primary/lower secondary audience, particularly boys - circuses, escapes, chases, clues, gangs, mysteries.

Danny Woo is an orphan, his parents were killed in a fire at the circus where they worked with their son a year ago. Danny is rather numb from the experience, and misses both his parents and Mysterium home at which they worked at escapology and hynopist acts.

His aunt Laura takes him to Hong Kong after an explosion at his school, and he quickly suspects that not only was this not an accident, but criminals are after him. Laura is kidnapped, and his childhood friend Zamora (a dwarf from the Mysterium) teams up with Danny to find her and work out why the gangs are after him. Does it have anything to do with parents?

The Hong Kong setting is refreshing, it is contemporary but other-wordly at the same time for western readers, Danny is a mature but still young hero that readers will identify with, his grief gradually coming out. Zamora makes a great sidekick - martial arts and strongman act coming in handy in the fights and chases.

I wanted more from the Mysterium. We hear a lot about it, but only see snippets in Danny's memories. It seems too intriguing for us not to see more!

A great start to an adventure/mystery series for 10-14 year olds.