Deconstructing Teen Superspies

So I'm writing what can be described as a YA spy novel and I'm trying to deconstruct the trope of the Teen Superspy. I know that the Alex Rider books did this, but I'm trying to do something different. One thing I was thinking of would be to portray the main character as less of a highly trained operative and more like an informant. Children have been used in this way by real world intelligence agencies. Maybe they could be a street urchin that gets paid to do dirty work, like thefts or murders.

A few things to note are that a random street urchin is probably not going to be trained (might panic in a very stressful situation), will probably suffer from not always having had access to enough food (so won't be as capable as a run-of-the-mill agent), and will be limited at where they can go without people actually paying attention to them. Oh, sure, you could give said street urchin some training to blend in, make them wash, give them clothes, but if you are going to go that far then hand-picked child soldiers trained from scratch are probably going to be a better choice for it for a variety of reasons.

That said, if the society your story takes place in is one that does not believe in capital punishment and their prisons are not total hell-holes, one could make a deal to a street urchin that for some of them is going to always be attractive, as for someone who truly has nothing having everything taken from them in exchange for getting guaranteed food and a place to sleep for a few years could be tempting. So, yes, using them as disposable operatives for dirtier work might actually work. And using them as informants definitely would work, with the caveat that being given information does not mean they are all going to be loyal to you.

edited 25th Nov '16 6:17:53 AM by Kazeto

You might want to check out Kim by Rudyard Kipling. It's about a street urchin who becomes a spy because he's so good at getting information and playing a role. He goes through a pretty electric training program. He also goes to school, courtesy of the British empire who's training him to work for their exploits in India. It might be interesting to do a modern day version of this character. He's very captivating as Victorian literature characters go.

Excellent suggestion!

Sherlock Holmes and his Baker Street Irregulars come to mind.

Easiest way is to think of Teen Superspies as child soldiers. In fact the anime Gunslinger Girl is probably what you'd want to go for. It's somewhere between Dirty Martini and full on moonshine in terms of spy fiction style.

Hey, Mads, you're back!

I just assumed she was elsewhere in threads I wasn't frequenting and was therefore "here all along".

Sorry, Mads.

I suppose the operative term here is "super." Most spies are in fact simply well placed individuals who have been convinced to supply information to someone else. Teenagers could (and have) serve in that capacity as well as anyone else.

Considering how unglamorous and boring actual spying is likely to be in contrast with the James-Bond-esque action. Those real life spies tumbled a few years back that looked like a typical couple who partied with "the right crowd", for example. Roald Dahl and Noel Coward were successful spies back in the day - and neither would fit the James Bond Superspy mold.

Expectation: the teen spy is some kind of hard-core martial artist/acrobat/ninja; realistic deconstruction: it's an average-looking kid that never has to do any of that "James Bond shit" because no one looks twice at them and their mates playing nearby or mooching around with their iPod/Pad/Pood...

Another series I'd recommend as a reference (not quite what you're looking for, but in the same vein) is the Cherub series by Robert Muchamore. Its whole gimmick is that the government recruits young castaway children as intelligence operatives, because a drug dealer wouldn't suspect that his son's friend from school has bugged his house.

The kids still get training (very brutal Training from Hell to ensure they're physically/psychologically hardened enough for this sort of work) and the climax is often your typical superspy "car chases and shootouts", but the meat of the story is about the kids integrating themselves into the target's life while remaining under their radar. To me it reads like Alex Rider on a smaller, less glamorous scale.