If Anthony Horowitz had his way, this feature would be threaded with hidden messages and coded allusions to people and publishers you know. For Horowitz is a trickster, a playful wordsmith with not one but two books out this year. Or has he? Actually it is three, he corrects me: his £1 Alex Rider Undercover has already been published ahead of World Book Day.

Second up, then, is a new Alex Rider, Nightshade, published by Walker in April. It is 12th in the children’s series and comes 20 years after Stormbreaker, which introduced us to the 14-year-old boy turned MI6 recruit (for those who don...