Line #41 Literature/HendersonsBoys


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hb_5.jpg]]
2
3	A British spy series set in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. ''Henderson's Boys'' concerns the activities of the last active British agent in Nazi-occupied France, and the children he adopts/recruits to assist him. It's sold as a prequel to the author's bestselling ''Literature/CherubSeries'', but has a significantly darker tone and a very different setting. Main characters include Charles Henderson, an adult British spy, Marc Kilgour, a young French orphan, Paul and Rosie Clarke, who are British kids orphaned in the first book, and PT Bivott, a young French American thief that fled American for France, only to arrive in time for UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. Other agents are added in ''Secret Army'', including Luc, Joel, Troy, Sam and Yves.
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5	The books try to keep things fairly realistic, and is very much in the Stale Beer category of SpyFiction. There are no over the top supervillains that can only be defeated by bullet dodging tux wearing super spies. The series makes it clear that one mistake, one stray bullet, or one unlucky event could doom the entire group.
6
7	'''The series consists of:'''
8	# ''The Escape''
9	# ''Eagle Day''
10	# ''Secret Army''
11	# ''Grey Wolves''
12	# ''The Prisoner''
13	# ''One Shot Kill''
14	# ''Scorched Earth''
15	----
16	!!This series provides examples of:
17	* AnyoneCanDie: Including young children. ''Scorched Earth'' contains [[spoiler:Rosie]].
18	* AttemptedRape: [[spoiler:Dumont]] tries to rape Rosie in ''Eagle Day'', but she fights him off.
19	** Happens on two occasions in ''Grey Wolves'', first when Marc and Henderson come across a Nazi officer trying to force himself on a French woman, and then again when [[spoiler:Marc is molested and implied almost raped by a convicted sex murderer while imprisoned for black market trading.]] On both occasions, [[spoiler:either Marc or Henderson knocks the would-be rapist out and kills them by force feeding them a cyanide pill]].
20	* BrotherSisterTeam: Paul and Rosie.
21	* TheBully: Luc, whose favourite target is Paul.
22	* BullyHunter: Several of the students retaliate against Luc's bullying.
23	* ChildrenForcedToKill: First Marc Kilgour and latter many of the other agents kill Germans as part of their operations.
24	* ChildSoldiers: Because it is wartime, the role of the ERU-B is even more soldier-like than their CHERUB successors.
25	* CloakAndDagger: ERU-B is very much in the CloakAndDagger tradition of British spy fiction and the RealLife UsefulNotes/WorldWarII era British Special Operations Executive and Commandos.
26	* TheSmurfettePrinciple: Somewhat inverted. Rosie, described on the [[http://www.hendersonsboys.com/rosieclarke.html official website]] as "The one who isn't a boy," is actually a tough, bossy, capable character who contributes to the team. However, the gender roles of the 1940's means that many characters persist in viewing her as {{The Smurfette\|Principle}}.
27	* ADeathInTheLimelight: [[spoiler:Rosie]] gets more moments in the penultimate book, ''One Shot Kill'', supposedly setting up a target on her back. However, it's {{Subverted}} when she lives throughout the hole book. [[spoiler:But then, its Double Subverted when one finds out that it was foreshadowing her death in ''Scorched Earth'', where she is only there for '''two chapters in total''']].
28	* DeathFromAbove: Both German and British bombing raids play an important part of the stories.
29	* DeathOfAChild: Hugo, a young child, is accidentally shot and killed by a Nazi agent at the climax of ''The Escape''.
30	** [[spoiler:Rosie]] also dies at the beginning of ''Scorched Earth'', shot by a Milice officer.
31	* DirtyCommunists: While not all of the communists in the series are horrible people, the communist resistance are much more brutal than the normal resistance.
32	* DrillSergeantNasty: Mr. Takada, a Japanese national who is training the children as an alternative to being in a prisoner of war camp.
33	* EverybodyWasKungFuFighting: Mr. Takada is teaching martial arts to ERU-B trainees.
34	* FreeRangeChildren: Rosie and Paul spend some time as free range children in ''The Escape''. PT Bivott also spends times a free range child. The training exercise in ''Secret Army'' involves the children performing a simulated mission that involves traveling through [[UsefulNotes/TheHomeFront England]] without adult supervision or help.
35	* GovernmentAgencyOfFiction: ERU and ERU-B, the predecessor to [[Literature/CherubSeries CHERUB]]
36	* HarmfulToMinors: Children are fully exposed to the horrors of war and Nazi occupation. One shot kill contains [[spoiler: a pretty brutal description of a 14 year old girl getting tortured nearly to death and being sent for execution before being rescued.]]
37	* HistoricalFiction: The series is set during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. So far, all the books have taken place on the Western Front of the European Theater.
38	* HomeBase: ERU-B has a training center established by the beginning of ''Secret Army''.
39	* TheInfiltration: The mission in ''Eagle Day'' and no doubt future missions.
40	* JustAKid: The premise of ERU-B is that ThoseWackyNazis will underestimate young agents because they are that.
41	* KarmaHoudiniWarranty:
42	** Mr. Tomas, the abusive orphanage director, isn't really punished in ''The Escape'' beyond one of the nuns blackmailing him and Marc robbing his house. It's later revealed in ''The Prisoner'' that [[spoiler:he's now a Nazi collaborator and the head of the Bordeaux Requisition Authority in charge of confiscating crops for the Nazis]]. Due to his position, Marc never has the chance to get revenge on him here either, but later returns in ''One-Shot Kill'' and [[spoiler:finds out that he's going to requisition his girlfriend Jae's farm for the Nazis, prompting him to break into Tomas's house, beat him to a pulp, force-feed him a cyanide pill and pour boiling water over him to MakeItLookLikeAnAccident.]]
43	** Similarly, Lanier, Marc's arch-nemesis at the orphanage, isn't defeated after ruining Marc's reputation in ''The Escape'', but returns in ''The Prisoner'', when it's revealed that [[spoiler:he too now works for the Nazis and Marc challenges him to a fight in front of all the other kids from the orphanage and easily defeats him and punches him out.]]
44	** Luc is pretty much a secondary VillainProtagonist who regularly bullies the other kids and takes sadistic joy in their suffering, [[spoiler:kills Antoine in ''Grey Wolves'' despite the fact that he's on their side because he's dead weight and says the Germans got him (admittedly, he did kind of have it coming)]] and commits a war crime in the last book when he executes a surrendering soldier because they don't have anywhere to hold him. He isn't punished in any of the stories, but [[spoiler:the WhereAreTheyNow epilogue reveals that his life pretty much went downhill after the war ended and he was expelled from school after assaulting a teacher, spent a while in prison for being a member of an extortion racket and ended up dying in a car crash while trying to escape from the police after murdering his girlfriend.]]
45	* KidsAreCruel: Well, not all, but several are, especially Luc.
46	* LesCollaborateurs:
47	** Mannstein in the first book refuses to sell his plans to the Allies and negotiates their sale to the Nazis. [[spoiler:An overheard conversation between two SS officers reveals that, as an ethnic Jew, he would have been sent to the concentration camps after the deal was closed, although Henderson assassinates him before this can happen.]]
48	** By the time of ''Secret Army'', both [[spoiler:Mr. Tomas]] and [[spoiler:Lanier]] have joined the Nazi requisition authority.
49	** Several appear in ''Scorched Earth'': the closest thing the book has to a BigBad, Captain Robert, is a member of the Milice, a police force composed of French collaborators. Two others in particular stand out:
50	*** Firstly, Gaspard, the leader of the Bordeaux resistance, collaborates with the Nazis and helps repress any actual resistance attempts in the hope of being made mayor. Henderson is not amused, and [[spoiler:carries out a bombing that kills several Nazis and frames Gaspard. The Nazis fall for it and hang him]].
51	*** And later on, Henderson captures a Polish collaborator and interrogates him. The collaborator tells him what he wants to know, and Henderson snaps his neck, reasoning that traitors don't deserve to live.
52	* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: After Marc kills [[spoiler:Mr. Tomas]] in ''One Shot Kill'', he douses hot water from a saucepan onto him to make it look like that he slipped and accidentally grabbed the saucepan, leading to his demise.
53	* ParentalAbandonment: All of the children in ERU-B are either [[ConvenientlyAnOrphan orphans]] or otherwise separated from their parents.
54	* RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil: Why Marc isn't executed for [[spoiler:murdering Carlos]] in ''Grey Wolves''.
55	* SchoolUniformsAreTheNewBlack
56	* SomethingOnlyTheyWouldSay: Not exactly, but in ''Grey Wolves'' an RAF pilot tries to find out if Charles Henderson is really English by asking him things only an Englishman would know. It doesn't work, because their lack of a common social class meant that their cultural frames of reference were too different.
57	* SpyFiction: Charles Henderson is a British spy and begins training children to act as spies.
58	* TheSpymaster: Charles Henderson and his superiors.
59	* SpySchool: ERU-B trains children to be spies and saboteurs. The term "spy school" is used in ''Grey Wolves''.
60	* StuffBlowingUp: It is the middle of a war after all...
61	* TeenSuperSpy: The entire point of ERU-B is to use teens and even preteens as spies. Nevertheless, this is very much a Stale Beer version of the teen spy rather than something along the lines of ''Literature/AlexRider'' or the ''Film/SpyKids'' movies.
62	* ThereAreNoTherapists: While [[Literature/CherubSeries CHERUB]] averts this by providing mental health services to their young agents, UsefulNotes/WorldWarII era Britain does not have such things high on their priority list.
63	* ThoseWackyNazis: Including, of course, [[StateSec SS]] officers
64	* TrainingFromHell: The training that ERU-B agents undergo.
65	* WhereAreTheyNow: ''Scorched Earth'' ends with this. However, as the series takes place during World War II, Marc is the only lead character not to have died between 1945 and the book being written.

Context Literature / HendersonsBoys