Double or Die by Charlie Higson

This is the third book in the Young James Bond series, and I gave it a rating of five out of five. As with the previous books, the setting is in England during the early 1900's. A teacher at Eton disappeared, and a friend of James receives a cryptic letter from him. Most of the book is spent trying to decode the seven hidden clues in order to find out what has happened to the professor. It is discovered that three men were working on a project to create a machine that thinks 1,000 times faster than any man (an early computer?), and it will be sold to the Russians. One of the men has been murdered, the professor is missing, and the third is unknown. James confronts two killers several times throughout the book and receives some unexpected help from a character in his past to defeat the bad guys. James must stop them and destroy the machine before the Russians get it out of England.

This book had the mysterious puzzles that I like and a great deal of action. James' struggles against the two killers added some suspense but also some humor. I enjoyed the creativity of the situations he was thrust into and unusual methods that were used to save him. I thought it was clever how the author blended characters from his previous books with new characters with this book. James needed help from all of them!