So what if Trudi's only just turned five? Somehow or other she always manages to get close to where she wants to be - the action. Too close for her own good, really, as she ends up getting kidnapped not once, but twice. Happily, because she's as irresistible as she is resourceful, she either escapes from or wins round her captors - in the process saving the day for herself and everyone else.

Stroke of luck, that, for her father. Not only because he's a doting dad who would be worried for his daughter, but he's also a highly politically active former Prime Minister. At this very moment, he is caught in a deadly pincer movement involving two competing groups of spies. These guys don't normally settle for taking prisoners, still less so when they're playing for dangerously high stakes. In this case it's a tug-of-war over whether UK should buy trains for the High Speed Two project from China. Beijing is determined this should happen, while the American President is equally insistent that it shouldn't. Trudi's dad needs an edge.

Luckily for him, among Trudi's many special qualities is her ability to twist all adults round her little finger. And that includes those who should, by rights, be beyond any persuasion - short of a gun pointed at their heads. Aided and abetted by her fiendishly feisty cat, Fang, and her astonishingly chatty parrot, Lady Casement, Trudi's living proof of the truth of two sayings.

One: The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

And two: Never mess with children or animals.