Indian teen on a spy mission

This is a brilliantly written young adult novel about a spunky teen and her many adventures.

If you are upset that Homeland came to an end this year, look no further than Apeksha Rao’s book, Along Came a Spyder. This fast-paced and brilliantly written Young Adult novel is about Samira Joshi, a 16-year-old wonderkid who comes from a family of spies. While other parents force their kids to recite tables, Samira’s parents, brilliant agents who work for RAW, teach her to solve anagrams and train her in counter-surveillance skills. Samira loves to crack puzzles that just don’t seem to fit. Spying runs in her blood and apart from her mad skills in hacking into computers or picking locks, she also has a natural flair for stunning tradecraft, even understanding the intricacies of covert warfare undertaken by the likes of Israel and Iran.

The book starts with Samira holidaying in Dubai with her parents. She is in a café when she realises that someone is following her. After all, she is a natural-born spy who has accompanied her parents on some unbelievable missions. The person who follows Samira to the washroom turns out to be Begum Jaan, a woman who works for a jihadi organisation. Begum Jaan has other plans — she wants to warn Samira’s parents about a planned attack on India.

Intriguing hobbies

The Joshis then rush to Mumbai, where Samira’s parents pack off to go on a black-ops mission to a small, undisclosed country near Saudi Arabia. They leave Samira with her grandmother, a sharp Miss Marple-like figure who is able to use her own specific tricks to uncover petty neighbourhood thieves and scandals.

One day, Samira stumbles upon a college mate who acts very bizarrely in a local barista. She sets up a tracking device on her and follows her to a mysterious government building, only to uncover a secret sisterhood called the Spyders. The Spyders are teenage girls who work undercover with the police and occasionally with the Intelligence Bureau. They are commandeered by Colonel Baldev Singh and his team. All the teen Spyders live an exciting life and are witty, tough girls from different backgrounds. They train and have intriguing hobbies, including detonating bombs and accessing the Dark Web.

We meet Samira’s parents again and all strands of the book intersect in exciting, even unexpected ways. The book’s biggest appeal is the author’s incredible sense of humour and how immensely likeable Samira is as the central character, an irreverent and courageous teen who isn’t afraid to speak her mind.

The book has some devilishly crafted premises, with the author ratcheting up the plot with a lot of excitement, twists and turns around every event. There is a great sub-plot in the book, when Samira and Tina infiltrate a college and attempt to crack down on a drug supplier. In another exciting adventure, the Mumbai police ask the Spyders to help them find a man who has defrauded people to the tune of several crores. We read about how Samira’s father once broke into the house of a Russian in Goa, suddenly ambushed by a whirring machine gun operated by motion sensors. The finer details of spy work make this book a treat, with surveillance systems, tin-tumbler locks and lock-picking skills, motion-trigger sensors, and of course, physical fights that break out among the Spyders themselves.

The action isn’t the only draw. You will love all the characters, who are their own people and don’t exist only to service the plot, especially Samira’s badass mom Alka, who once smiled her way out of getting caught rifling through the contents of a Pakistani diplomatic bag. My daughter and I used to revere Lauren Child’s Ruby Redfort as our favourite YA spy novel, but Along Came a Spyder is set to knock that book fairly and squarely off the pedestal.