Product Description

Expats, espionage and the exotic setting of Nairobi - here's an adventure-thriller you won't be able to put down. Darcie Lock is inadvertently thrown into a world of SAS men, espionage, corruption, polo games and fashion parades when her father is taken hostage while investigating an international smuggling ring. Darcie didn't even know her father was a secret agent - she thought he had a dead-end job processing visa applications! Darcie is commissioned to find out what happened - she is the last person to be suspected of being a spy. Armed with her sharp wit and only a few gadgets, can Darcie save her father? Once again, Julia Golding will have you captivated from page one with this thrilling African adventure.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #91902 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Julia Golding read English at Cambridge then joined the Foreign Office and served in Poland. Her work as a diplomat took her from the high point of town twinning in the Tatra Mountains to the low of inspecting the bottom of a Silesian coal mine. On leaving Poland, she exchanged diplomacy for academia and took a doctorate in the literature of the English Romantic Period at Oxford. She then joined Oxfam as a lobbyist on conflict issues, campaigning at the UN and with governments to lessen the impact of conflict on civilians living in war zones. Married with three children, Julia now lives in Oxford. Her first book, The Diamond of Drury Lane, won the 2006 Ottakar's Children's Book Prize.

Customer Reviews

Great, fun read
Darcie Lock's father has disappeared and she is given a choice; try to help find him, or hop on a plane to the States, and safety, where her mother is waiting for her. Darcie is gadgetted up, attacked, and takes tea with the rich and privileged of Nairobi, but it is the characters who stick out in this story.
She has to decide who she can trust, who has their own private motives, and who has more secrets than they care to share. Most importantly, she has to find her dad. All of these characters are brought to life by Golding's lively language, and the situations Darcie faces are solved more believably than in other spy stories.
Good for girls (and boys) who refuse to sit there looking pretty, I would recommend this book to all younger teens (and alot of bigger kids too - I'm sixteen and enjoyed it!) Will I be buying the sequel? Most definitely yes.

Fantastic! - must read
Ringmaster is a thrilling tale of Darcie Lock whose life is turned upside down when her father is kidnapped. It is a page turning adventure, each chapter brings new surprises. My 12 year old daughter who is not a big reader loved it and quickly read it. She is now eagerly awaiting the next installment.

Not Alex Rider but still quite good
Darcie Lock was a normal girl living in Nairobi but now she's got to be a spy in order to find her captured father.

I found it a bit crazy that the intelligence people just turned up at her house and expected her to suddenly train and become a spy. It got better as it went along though and I did enjoy the ending.

I didn't think this book would be very good but I actually quite liked it. Some of the ways she got out of situations were a bit ridiculous but I still enjoyed it for a quick read!